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Articles by Alexei Bayer

Back to 1960s Moscow in 'Murder at the Dacha'

"Murder at the Dacha" by Alexei Bayer is a detective thriller set in 1960s Moscow, the Moscow that New York-based Bayer grew up in. The novel features...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Russian Rebel Spirit

Back in the Soviet era, American historian Richard Pipes wrote that the Russian people are both inherently anarchic and frightened of their own nature...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's Petrodollar Days of Plenty Are Over

Conspiracy theories have a fatal attraction to the Russian public. Nothing of importance can ever happen in the world without some powerful players...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's Economy Is Stuck in the Past

Karl Marx taught that economics were the base on which ideology, politics and morality all rested. President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle read...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Lyubimov and the Miracle of Soviet Theater

Yury Lyubimov, who died last week at age 97, was the most influential cultural figure in Moscow in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All performances...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Reliving 'Red Cavalry' in Today's Ukraine

Writer Isaac Babel is known for two short-story collections: "The Odessa Tales" and "Red Cavalry Stories." Both were banned when Babel disappeared into the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Sun Is Setting on Russia's Empire

I'm a fairly typical product of the great Soviet melting pot. My father was born in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and grew up in Almaty, then...
opinion Alexei Bayer

If the West Won't Help Ukraine, China Will

As it becomes increasingly clear that the West has no stomach for war with Russia over Ukraine, Ukraine must constantly remind Western politicians and their...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Pines for the 19th Century

Speaking at the opening of a World War I memorial in Moscow earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin noted that victory in that war had been stolen...
opinion Alexei Bayer

EU's Unity Won't Last Long

From the start, the European integration project has been based on accommodation and compromise, on rules and laws rather than confrontation. It...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's War in Ukraine is Now Europe's Conflict Too

It is a stark symbol of our times. On one side there was a wide-body jet liner, made by a U.S. company and operated by Malaysia Airlines, en route...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Can't Conquer Kiev


Aside from the threat of Western sanctions, there may be other reasons why Russian troops have not been sent to Ukraine, reasons that reach back into the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Forgets Europe's Initial Compassion

Relations between Russia and the West have reached rock-bottom and questions are being asked about what went wrong.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Prepare for War, Not Peace

How richly symbolic. Just before the 70th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy, Barack Obama flew to Poland, the first official victim of Nazi...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Will Regret Its Gas Deal With China

Russia no longer takes economics into account when it makes policy decisions.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin Fails Big as a Strategist

During the Cold War, Washington was playing for the long term, building a stable international system that survives to this day and serves as the core...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why the Kremlin May Turn Against the Jews

While reviving many aspects of the Soviet Union, President Vladimir Putin's regime has avoided one of the most odious of all Soviet practices: state-sponsored...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why the World Looks at Russia With Disdain

During recent U.S. presidential campaigns, Republican candidates made two outlandish statements. Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate, predicted...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The War That Russia Didn't Fight

Karma is a belief that past actions return to haunt us. Once a bad deed is perpetrated, bad karma casts a shadow over the future, shaping it and inflicting...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Managing Russia's Economic Decline

One reason why Russians support their country's invasion of Crimea is because Russia looks strong again. The Russian military appears well-equipped,...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin's Pandora's Box in Ukraine

It is a cliche that wars never go as planned. What President Vladimir Putin intends by invading Crimea remains unknown. While moving gradually and maintaining...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Apotheosis of Putin

After the rule of Augustus, Rome developed an imperial cult in which emperors were declared gods, and shrines were built to venerate them. Some religious...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Let the Games Begin

Just before the start of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, I learned by chance that there were still tickets available to see most events. My 11-year-old...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Medvedev's Liberal Hot Air

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev often looks like the odd man out in the government he heads. Many people expected him to be retired to some meaningless...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The High Price of Long Vacations

Russians enjoy longer holidays than people in any of the other 40 countries tracked by the travel website Hotels.com, combining the generous 28-day...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's Killing Fields

One hundred years ago, the Russian Empire entered the bloodiest period any country on Earth had ever experienced before. Between the start of World...
opinion Alexei Bayer

When Swine Rules the U.S., Russia and Ukraine

A banker friend noted recently that even though several investment banks were wrecked by corruption, greed, rigging rates and currency markets and selling...
opinion Alexei Bayer

China's Tail Wagging the Dog

China has always regarded itself as the center of the world, the Middle Kingdom surrounded by hostile or subservient barbarians. Now, after a hiatus...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Russian March Starts in Kiev

Russia has always had a thinking minority and a feeling majority. The latter were out in force last Monday during the National Unity Day, which, in classic...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Collective Punishment for Migrants

In George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the Party holds a daily "Two Minutes Hate," during which it whips up a frenzy of collective fear...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The European Hockey Union

Zagreb's Medvescak became the 28th team in Russia's Kontinental Hockey League this year. This was a milestone for the KHL, which is only in its sixth...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Age of the Super Rich

Coatesville, Pennsylvania is home to Lukens Steel, once the world's largest steel plate producer. A hundred years ago it was owned by the wealthy Lukens...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Taking Back Russia

One day in the mid-1960s, my aunt Sveta was carrying apples in a knitted bag known as an avoska. It split and the apples scattered on the ground.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Higher Oil Prices Should Worry Russia

The Economic Development Ministry lowered its projections for Russia's economy, downgrading growth to only 1.8 percent for 2013.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Better Ways to Shame Russia Than Boycott

Boycotting sporting events for political reasons is a pretty old notion. The civilized world didn't boycott the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and most...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Russia and the West Don't Mix

Russia turned westward in the 18th century, but its relationship with the West has remained strained. The two civilizations were like oil and water:...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Ignoring Its Own Bubbles

The news from Russia is increasingly absurd. One kangaroo court posthumously convicted lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of committing the very crime he had...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Controlling History

The 1952 short story by U.S. science fiction writer Ray Bradbury "A Sound of Thunder" is about a hunting safari in a time machine, when hunters get...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Deep Roots of Russian Homophobia

Today, Russian gays find themselves victims of state-sponsored persecution much like Soviet Jews did in the 1970s.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Moscow's Old Normal

I was born in Moscow in the mid-1950s, soon after Russia's capital entered a period of relative stability that lasted for nearly four decades. Before that...
opinion Alexei Bayer

How U.S. Took a Few Pages From Stalin's Book

For some 45 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in a deadly embrace of the Cold War.
opinion Alexei Bayer

No Place for Guriev in Putin's Russia

Sergei Guriev's decision to resign as dean of the New Economic School and to stay abroad was widely discussed in Russia and in the West.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Can Score Big With Hockey

The performance of the Russian national hockey team at the 2013 World Championship in Helsinki earlier this month has been roundly criticized.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's Unfinished War

World War II is only a vague recollection in the rest of the world. Three years ago, my wife's cousin, a heroic U.S. fighter pilot and former prisoner...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia's Stunning Self-Destruction

Early in the 20th century, three powers were vying for economic supremacy. The United States took over leadership in the Anglo-Saxon world from Britain...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Kremlin's Court Jesters

In Russia's "monarchy," the Duma plays royal fools to the modern autocrat.
opinion Alexei Bayer

After Cyprus Bath, Russia Needs New Haven

The International Herald Tribune ran a cartoon of tourists snapping pictures of a classical ruin with an inscription over its architrave: "Cyprus...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Bubble Trouble in Public Potty Prices

Russians like to quote a line from writer Mikhail Bulgakov, asserting that social collapse, prior to manifesting itself in the condition of public...
opinion Alexei Bayer

How the Kremlin Created a Collective Sharikov

As is well-known, great novels remain relevant long after they are written. Even in the highly mobile U.S., "The Scarlet Letter" and "Moby Dick" give...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Scared Deputies Look for U.S. Safehouses

Anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny revealed that one of the leaders of the ruling United Russia party, State Duma Deputy Vladimir Pekhtin, owns...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Martin Luther King's Russia

Amid all the legitimate concerns about the rise of radical nationalism in Russia, it has no real future in a multiethnic country.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Russia Has Trouble Attracting Investors

Recently, Moscow Times columnist Yulia Latynina showed how differently the wealthy in the U.S. and Russia use their fortunes. She listed a dozen U...
opinion Alexei Bayer

From Superpower to Super Weakling

In 1992, I heard George Kennan, the eminent U.S. diplomat and author of the Cold War policy of containment against the Soviet Union, talk about the need...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Comes Full Circle in 100 Years

During the Soviet era, the year 1913 was mentioned almost daily in books, newspapers, speeches by government officials and news reports. It was the last...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Lights Dim Over the Duma

Many years ago on a U.S. flight to Moscow, a young, very mid-American couple asked me to help them with their Russian customs forms. I couldn't help...
opinion Alexei Bayer

U.S. Learns From Russia's Lunatic Science

From the Age of Enlightenment onward, ratio — or reason — has been seen as the greatest of human qualities, and science has enjoyed unquestioned...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The First Post-Soviet Revolution

On July 14, 1789, as the Paris mob stormed the Bastille, King Louis XVI wrote "rien" in his diary, meaning that nothing of note had happened on that...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Reason Russian-Americans Dislike Obama

Among my 400 Facebook friends are people I've known all my life, former colleagues and a bunch of random people whom I crossed paths with over the years...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Americans and Russians Both Love Fairy Tales

If U.S. President Barack Obama loses on Nov. 6, it will be because of the economy. Or rather, because Americans have come to expect economic miracles...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why EU Deserves the Nobel Prize

The choice of the European Union for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize was controversial. The EU is in crisis, and critics are saying that if you do wish...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin's Slavophiles Gain Over Westernizers

In Russia, the past is never left alone. Passionate debate still rages in the country about Josef Stalin, and it is not uncommon to hear political...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Putin Should Vote for Romney

When President Vladimir Putin in a recent interview to RT state television said a few nice words about U.S. President Barack Obama, conservatives in the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Anti-Semitic, Anti-Gay but Not Anti-West

Dictators prefer to keep their borders closed, and in Russia, the land of the original Iron Curtain, isolation and repression have always been inexorably...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Fomenko's Death Is This August's Tragedy

Тhe worst calamities tend to befall Russia in August. It's been called the month of disasters, but it is rather a month of shrinkage.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin's Regime Won't Collapse Anytime Soon

Russia has never been a normal country, but lately things have been getting a little too odd even by Russia's own standards.
opinion Alexei Bayer

How the Lottery Jackpot Is Destroying Russia

In the 1990s, Russia was a poor country struggling to make ends meet and to find its place in the post-Soviet world. Then came a sudden rise in global...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Sochi Is a Terrible Choice for the Olympics

On June 27, Moskovsky Komsomolets published an article about a Russian man who, while skiing, found an iPhone that someone had lost and took it to the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Let Down by U.S. Decline

Russia's pro-democracy activists, human rights campaigners and corruption fighters are disappointed in U.S. President Barack Obama.
opinion Alexei Bayer

And the Nobel Goes to … a Russian!

Since its establishment more than a century ago, the Nobel Peace Prize has been the closest the global community has come to establishing a moral...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Russia's Mafia State Is So Inefficient

In "The Godfather," author Mario Puzo describes criminal boss Don Corleone's organization as a highly centralized money-making machine. The Godfather...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Medvedev's Dangerous Incompetence

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is a well-meaning yet incompetent man. His recently completed term as president was spent, innocuously enough, tweeting...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russian Men Have Grown Up

At a banking conference in the mid-1990s, I had lunch with a Russian banker. In the course of an hour, I learned that he was married but had numerous...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Kremlin Kleptocracy Affects U.S. Interests

Over the past year, Washington readily threw its support behind opposition movements in Libya and Syria. That was an easy decision since neither Libya...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin Showed His Weakness With Poland

The citizens' awakening in Russia dates from the disputed State Duma elections on Dec. 4 and the first protest held on the following day on Chistiye...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Jews in Russia

After last December's elections to the State Duma, a number of Russian citizens went to the studios of the web TV channel Dozhd to tape a short...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Eternal Oil Curse

Despite continuing street protests, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remains very likely to return for a third term as president, probably after the first...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Moscow Is Unlovable and Unlivable

Today's Moscow is unlovable and unlivable, overdeveloped, underserved by public utilities and choked by traffic. You can't drive, you can't breathe, there...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Less May Be More for Protesters

Pro-democracy protests in Russia are being organized by writers, journalists, artists and other cultural figures. There are few businesspeople among...
opinion Alexei Bayer

A New Year of Protests

The protest rallies in December were a response to two domestic events: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's crude declaration on Sept. 24 that he plans...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Russia No Longer Emulates the United States

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said those who participated in recent protests against rigged State Duma elections were encouraged and paid for by the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Fighting the 'Mafia State'

Russian businessman Alexei Kozlov was arrested and sentenced to eight years after falling out with his business partner, former Federation Council Senator...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Misplaced Hopes for Political Change

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was booed at а wrestling match a week ago, and Russia's liberal intelligentsia felt encouraged.
opinion Alexei Bayer

Stuck in the 1930s

When I came to the United States from the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, I was a little disappointed. Only when I got to Chicago a decade later did...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Kremlin's China Problem

China's success has been very important for Russia. Of course, Russian leaders find it hard to admit that they envy the Chinese. After all, when Communists...
opinion Alexei Bayer

The Pesky Stagnation Problem

Many jaws dropped when Dmitry Peskov declared that the Brezhnev years of stagnation had been a time of great achievement for Russia. But, of course...
opinion Alexei Bayer

West Should Treat Russia Like Syria

Even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asserted at the United Russia party convention last month that he and President Dmitry Medvedev had long ago...
opinion Alexei Bayer

A Viking State

The origins of the Russian state and its early history help explain the country's modern political makeup. According to the Kievan Primary Chronicle...

America Lost the War on Terror

Ten years ago, New York lived through the horror of the destruction of the World Trade Center. A sad occasion under any circumstances, this year's...
opinion Alexei Bayer

How Taxes Help Build a Democracy

Historians have a theory that democracy in Britain grew out of the state's need for money and the necessity to tax the country's population. In return...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Could Become U.S. Enemy No. 1

Over the past month, as U.S. politicians busily undermined the country's economy and the global financial system in an ideological fight over the debt...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Putin's Quadriga Problem

Germans rarely treat us to a good laugh, so the decision to award this year's Quadriga prize to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was a precious moment...
opinion Alexei Bayer

A Tale of 2 Industrial Declines

At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, some political scientists predicted that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually come...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Who Really Won World War II?

Russians react nervously to any narrative about World War II that differs from their own. When the United States, Britain or France pay tribute to their...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Legitimizing Succession

Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution nearly a century ago, all Russian leaders have faced a succession problem. It is all the more remarkable because...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Communism Is Alive and Well

The Moscow City Court's decision to reduce the sentences in the Yukos case comes just after Amnesty International recognized the two former Yukos executives...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Russia Helping to Create a U.S. Intelligentsia

The spread of the Russian-speaking diaspora has been one of the most significant effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the rest of the...
opinion Alexei Bayer

From Silver Age to Stupidity

Last week, there was an unmarked anniversary: 120 years since the birth of an extraordinary Russian, Nikolai Bruni. The only reason he is remembered...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Dealing With a National Meat Grinder

Divisions in today's Russia are many, but the most important one concerns the attitude toward Stalin and his policies. One side regards Stalin as a butcher...
opinion Alexei Bayer

Why Russia's High Tech Is California Dreaming

I recently attended the annual Global Technology Symposium. Although held in California and organized by Silicon Valley insiders, it had a strong...
opinion Alexei Bayer

U.S. Lessons for Russia

If the U.S. economy slips into another downturn, it will spread to the rest of the world, just as the meltdown in the U.S. residential mortgage market...