In the past couple of years, Russia has been thrust into the American political spotlight like never before, earning itself both a reputation and mythology that posits Russia as the ultimate James Bond villain. At the heart of this mythology are misconceptions about Russia's aims, goals, and intentions that originate from an American media culture that is starved of intellectual diversity when it comes to Russia. That is, Russia is tarred as a pariah, an arch-nemesis of the United States, and the...
Михаил Мухаметдинов
... secured a permanent presence there by establishing a coal concession on the archipelago. In 1926, the Soviet government staked a claim to an enormous chunk of the Arctic: 6.8 million square kilometers of sea, declaring it the polar territory of the USSR. As a result, the territory of the Soviet Union grew from the furthermost continental points on the Kola and Chukotka peninsulas all the way to the North Pole. The first ship sailed along the Northern Sea Route in 1932. It was in that period that ...
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Rossiya 1 television channel for the documentary Antarctica: 200 Years of Peace, Moscow, February 2, 2020
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Rossiya 1 television channel for the documentary Antarctica: 200 Years of Peace, Moscow, February 2, 2020
Sergey Brilyov
: Good afternoon, Mr Lavrov.
Sergey Lavrov:
Good afternoon.
Sergey Brilyov:
I don’t suppose you’ve been to Antarctica?
Sergey Lavrov:
Not yet, unfortunately.
Sergey Brilyov: ...
Russia is back and here to stay. Others had better accept it and learn to deal with it — without undue expectations, but also without inordinate fear.
For many in the West, Russia’s return to the world stage over the past few years has come as a surprise, and not an especially pleasant one. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, the country was written off as a regional power, a filling station masquerading as a state.
Five years later, however, Russia is still resilient, despite the Western...
Only the continuation of nuclear arms control can create the political and military conditions for eventual limitations of innovative weapons systems and technologies, as well as for a carefully thought through and phased shift to a multilateral format of nuclear disarmament.
Only the continuation of nuclear arms control can create the political and military conditions for eventual limitations of innovative weapons systems and technologies, as well as for a carefully thought through and phased...
... did to take the world away from a nuclear catastrophe.
Then, though, very few could hear through the official Kremlin fanfare the first chimes of the bell tolling the end of the Cold War.
Had Gorbachev not come to power, the transformation of the USSR’s politics, economy and military known as perestroika would not have happened. Or if it had, it would have been much later.
One of perestroika’s core elements was the cardinal shift in the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. Had it remained the ...
... and privations were so severe they pushed a tottering Tsarist Russia over the brink of revolution.
Later, against Nazi Germany, the partners were shuffled around in this game of geopolitical musical chairs, but the song remained the same – let the USSR bleed for Britain and the US, who were waiting in the wings to claim victory and pick up the spoils.
America emerged as the principal beneficiary of that war, while things did not go according to plan for the British, who ever since have been relegated ...
Marshal Bulganin and Premier Khrushchev visited Bangalore, India in the 1950s and planted two tall trees there with great pomp and ceremony, to signify the growing solidarity between India and the USSR.
It is said the Bulganin tree started growing at a slant right away and toppled over a few years later (to be replanted discreetly in a less prominent space). Apparently, a few years after that, the Khrushchev tree also toppled over.
Source: liders....
... collapse of the Soviet Union.
Because of that terrible decade, Russia finds itself once again having to regroup and rebuild, to get back to the position of technological superiority that had reached its peak, ironically, just before the dissolution of the USSR.
It is well known that Russia successfully accomplished several cycles of re-industrialization and modernization, going back to the ‘Great Reforms of 1861. After the precipitous drop of the First World War and Civil War came the recovery of the ...
