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Russia's 21st Century Began in 1991

As the year 2000 approached, two of the main topics of conversation were: Could the world's computers handle the switchover, the so-called Y2K problem...

Kazakhstan May Be the Next Ukraine

Seizing their "rightful" portion of Kazakhstan would bring Russia great riches and enormous geopolitical advantages.

Obama Should Push Putin Back

Better than disengaged containment, a harder line toward Putin will surely get his attention — and his respect.

Caliphate for an Hour

The Chechen insurgence has already morphed from a national independence movement into one seeking a caliphate for the entire North Caucasus.

Not One Inch West

Putin's invasion of the Crimea has been criticized for "not being 21st century enough," but even the 21st century itself hasn't been very 21st century...

The Reddest Line

Political crises are all alike, as Leo Tolstoy might have written had he been a columnist instead of a novelist. At least they are alike in their early...

Evaluating Russia After Sochi and McFaul

U.S.-Russian relations have come to a small moment of opportunity. U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul is stepping aside just as Russia is flush with pride...

10 Good Things About Putin's Russia

Customer service has improved, there is less anti-Semitism and Russians are free to pray and leave the country if they want.

St. Kalashnikov

Shortly before his death in December at 94, Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, began to be wracked by spiritual doubts.

Vengeance in Sochi

The closing ceremony for the Sochi Olympics will be Feb. 23, the day that marks the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Chechens, Ingush and others...

New Strains of Terrorism

Islamists may be fanatics, but they are not fools. They learn from past mistakes and work constantly to create new means of eluding existing security...

The Hitler Prize

It is time to establish a Hitler Prize for acts of great political evil. Officials and terrorists would both be eligible.

Made in Russia

Vacationing recently in the high Mojave desert with family and friends, we all drank a lot of water to stay hydrated. "Look!" said a vivacious French...

Russia's Pivot North

The first shots in the "Arctic Wars" were fired on Sept. 18. Eleven warning shots were fired by the Russian border guard at Greenpeace activists intent...

Sakharov Prize for Snowden?

The Middle East in general and Syria in particular have provided such riveting political drama recently that even the whereabouts and actions of U...

The Skies Above Damascus

When U.S. President Barack Obama dispatched his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, in March 2012 to confer with the newly re-elected President...

The Military Wild Card

The concept of "failed states" must now be supplemented with the concept of "failed democracies." Russia and Egypt are examples of countries where...

Hiding the Real Story

We rarely get the real story. The reasons range from deception to mere distraction.

Tsarnaev, Snowden and Navalny

Three young men, all connected to Russia, have changed the world we live in. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a villainous figure, Edward Snowden ambiguous and Alexei...

The Road to Hell

By offering Snowden asylum, Putin wanted to stick it to the U.S., while at the same time trying not to overly aggravate a country that is 10 times...

Days of the Condor

We are all part of Edward Snowden's movie now. Although his story is as real as the prison cell he'll probably end up in, it still seems like a new...

Divorce a la Russe

Sometime in the late '70s I was with a group of Soviet dissidents watching a doddering Leonid Brezhnev speak on television. Suddenly, one of them, a woman...

The Lessons of Boston

After Boston, for some prospective terrorists the attraction and glory of a wild shoot-out and car-chase coupled with jihadist martyrdom will be irresistible...

A Recipe for Floating Arctic Chernobyls

When the Russians are building nuclear power stations in the middle of the Arctic, it causes a lot of concern — particularly considering the fact...

China's Greatest Fears

Two fears keeping China awake at night are a possible U.S. cyber counter-attack and the country's two restless minorities, the Tibetans and the Muslim...

China's Secret Foreign Policy

Everyone is afraid of China. One reason is an instinctive reflex to avoid anything enormous moving at great speed. But even more important is that...

A 3-Pronged Russia Policy

The U.S. should seize the moral high ground in U.S.-Russian relations, engage Russia on Iran and Syria and develop a smart policy toward China and the...

America's Poor Grasp of Putinology

Every self-respecting intelligence agency should have a full-time Putinologist. One reason is that President Vladimir Putin alone rules Russia. What he...

Putin's Colossal Anti-Magnitsky Blunder

President Vladimir Putin's initial response to the Magnitsky Act was right on the money: to accuse the U.S. government of monumental hypocrisy by focusing...

Rethink Before You Reset

The United States' best foreign policy is its own example. Millions around the world watched in admiration as the U.S. voted without strife or a whiff...

Restoring Russia's Greatness

Russia has failed to fashion a new identity for itself. It’s all about taking the money and running to Britain or the United States, if you can afford...

Spy vs. Spy

Like the poor, spies are always with us. Everybody does it: Enemies spy on each other, but so do allies. During the Cold War, the Soviets were, of course...

Saving Face(book)

Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came to Moscow bearing gifts. He presented Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev with a T-shirt with Medvedev's...

Russia Needs Its Own Prophet Muhammed

Russia has none of that blind emotional sense of the sacred that many Muslims feel for the Quran and the image of the prophet. That makes it a society...

opinion Richard Lourie

How Belarus Could Become Part of Russia

Sept. 11, 2001, was a failure not only of intelligence but also of imagination. No one had even conceived that terrorists could seize airplanes and fly...

Learning to Be 2nd-Rate, Gracefully

Ideally, the Olympics celebrate youth, energy and excellence. But, of course, the games are never free of economics and politics.

Russia on Trial Over Navalny And Pussy Riot

In their actions, the young women of Pussy Riot are similar to American political street theater, but their speech and demeanor during the trial...

Opposition Pushes Putin's Panic Button

On May 7, I watched Vladimir Putin's inauguration live on television in Moscow. The two things that struck me most then seem even more striking almost...

In Search of a New Party

Vladimir Lenin got off one of his more memorable lines during the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets in Petrograd in June 1918.

Stalin's Worst Nightmare

Drunk after a late night with his cronies in the Kremlin, Josef Stalin collapses into bed. He dreams he has traveled through time and is reading the April...

Putin's Arrested Development

Recently, in a bookstore in Buenos Aires, a title caught my eye: "Gombrowicz in Argentina." Witold Gombrowicz was a Polish writer famous enough from his...

Beautiful Friendships

The mounting tension over Iran's nuclear program is also highlighting increased Israeli and U.S. involvement in the Caucasus. Apart from everything...

Odessa File 2012

It would be a mistake to dismiss the recent foiled plot to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as no more than a cheesy, cynical pre-election...

Kremlin May Get Last Laugh After the Vote

In two weeks, the presidential election will be over, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will most likely squeak out a majority in the first round...

2012 Predictions

In a column a year ago, I made a few predictions about Russia in 2011, promising to check on them a year later.

An Open Letter to Sergey Brin

Dear Sergey,
As you no doubt noticed, protesters took to the streets by the thousands in your native city of Moscow in December. I say "by the thousands"...

Putin's 3 Choices

For all the recent tumult in Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is still the most powerful man in the country. The choices he makes now and in...

Booing Putin

There is a powerful scene in the movie "Doctor Zhivago" that goes a long way in explaining recent events in Russia. In the scene, a tsarist officer...

Dose of Oppression to Save Russian Culture

I am usually a little foggy in the morning, so I had to shake my head extra hard at a front-page story in the Nov. 15 Arts section of The New York...

The Logic of Putin's 3rd Term

The smart money says that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be president from 2012 to 2024. He will be 72 in 2024 and probably will not be up for "castling"...

Why Occupy Wall Street Hasn't Hit Russia

A few years ago, a Russian friend visited me in New York and expressed a desire to see Wall Street. But when I took her there, she exclaimed with...

Zeroing In

It was 25 years ago this October in Reykjavik that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan came as close to banning nuclear...

Putin's Wabi Sabi

Neutrinos made headlines recently for having apparently traveled faster than the speed of light during an experiment at the European Organization...

The Cold Rush

From Peter the Great until today, Russia's orientation has been westward. Only Western ideas, institutions and technologies could make Russia competitive...

Resets and Reruns

U.S.-Russian relations took a complex turn in late May. On May 26, the U.S. State Department issued a statement declaring the Caucasus Emirate, a militant...

Zombie Russia

The New York Times recently included a "special advertising supplement … sponsored and written by Rossiiskaya Gazeta." Since Rossiiskaya Gazeta is...

Lessons for Medvedev in Bin Laden's Killing

I was standing on the sidewalk in front of a bar when a stranger came out on the fire escape and shouted down, “We got bin Laden!” I brought the news...

The Face of War

On April 25, 1945, U.S. and Soviet armies linked up at the Elbe River, which meant, as a BBC broadcast of the time exulted, that Nazi Germany had...

Imperial Temptations

Since 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet collapse, there will inevitably be a spate of articles viewing those two decades from every possible...

Tremors of Arab Youthquake Rumble East

Stability is the hot new commodity. If you can't deliver that, it doesn't matter much what else you can supply. This is especially true of energy. The current...

The Kremlin's Dance in Japan's Ring of Fire

It turns out that World War II isn't quite over. The dispute between Russia and Japan over the four southernmost Kuril Islands has kept them from signing...

World War IV

The horrendous bombing at Domodedovo Airport was quickly eclipsed by the Egyptian uprising, but both are incidents in the new world war. That war began...

My Predictions for 2011

January is the month for resolutions and predictions. As a rule, little comes of either. Still, I thought I’d try my hand at making some predictions...

Rich Oligarch, Poor Oligarch

Every December, the richest men in the world sail their yachts to the French Caribbean island of St. Bart’s to throw lavish New Year’s Eve parties...

The Mouse That Roared

Beijing’s reactions to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights activist and writer Liu Xiaobo brought back memories of the bad old days...

Ivan the Terrible vs. Peter the Great

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov notes that when lecturing he always asks the audience to name the most effective manager of all Russian leaders in the last...

The START and Khodorkovsky Bellwether

U.S. President Barack Obama made a point of reassuring President Dmitry Medvedev that Senate ratification of New START would be his “top priority." There...

Some Assembly Required

In today’s America, only media personalities can draw crowds in the hundreds of thousands to demonstrate in Washington. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert...

Bullish on the Bear

Russian policy is now driven by two factors: the imperative to modernize and the fear of China. Both dictate a move to the West, which is now well under...

$800M Membership Dues

Sometimes what doesn’t happen counts most. In late September, President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree banning the delivery of the S-300 air-defense...

The $2 Million Spy

Russia was the big loser in the summer spy scandal when it lost its 10 “illegals.” In the subsequent spy swap, Moscow also lost four Russians convicted...