Why do conspiracy theories so often receive their strongest support from the world’s dictators? Dictators are almost always oddballs, but it is worth asking:...
The fate of nations often comes down to the choices made by a handful of individuals at a particular moment in history. Today, the United States is facing...
At his annual year-end news conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin was as informal, audacious and offensive as his favorite American presidential...
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to “find and punish” those responsible for using a homemade bomb to bring down a Russian airliner over Egypt in...
Many historians and economists insist that we live in an age shaped by vast and impersonal forces. The actions and decisions of one man or woman, no matter...
Twenty-four years ago this month, Soviet hard-liners, desperate to stop the country’s nascent democratic transition, arrested Mikhail Gorbachev and declared...
Earlier this month, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen of Middle Eastern descent, opened fire at two military sites in Chattanooga,...
In Soviet Russia, everybody knew that they were being watched. Any deviation from officially sanctioned behavior would be treated with suspicion and most...
The May 1 parade in Moscow to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II was the greatest Victory Day celebration since the Soviet Union’s...
In his play “Murder in the Cathedral,” T. S. Eliot describes the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, as a silently ordered hit. The English...
“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” observed Joseph de Maistre, the Sardinian kingdom’s diplomatic envoy to the Russian empire, some 200 years...
In his 1979 novel “The Island of Crimea,” Vasily Aksyonov imagined the region’s flourishing independence from the Soviet Union. Aksyonov, a dissident writer...
Remember the year 2007? Russia was starting to look like a world power again. Its economy was growing at a record 8.5 percent annual rate. Political life had...
For more than two decades, August has been the cruelest month for Russian leaders. The August 1991 coup led to the departure of President Mikhail Gorbachev...
Whose fault is it that the Boston Marathon was bombed? Is Russia to blame for 250 years of trying to incorporate the Muslim North Caucasus nations, like the...
Vladimir Putin has finally done it. Russia has been vying for the West’s esteem for centuries, with approval by the French – a sought-after prize...
In a recent interview, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev proclaimed that he wants a second term in office following the 2012 election, but that he would not...