The Kremlin Does A Very Clever Thing

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on January 4, 2013 .12 Comments

Lost in the furor and liberal butthurt over Depardieu’s defection has been a development of far greater import: Russia is going to cardinally change its elections system. According to Putin’s directive to the Presidential Administration and the Central Elections Committee, they are to come up with a bill that transforms Russia’s current proportional system to […]

Putin’s Birthday, Birth Of A Legacy

This about History, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on October 15, 2012 .15 Comments

The latest US-Russia.org Expert Discussion Panel focused on an assessment of Putin’s historical legacy, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Here I try to answer whether history will see Putin as the “founder of a modern and successful Russia”, or as a tragic figure who threw away his chance of greatness to the “delusion of indispensability”: […]

Quiz: Did This Happen In Russia Or A Democratic Country?

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on March 9, 2012 .1 Comment

Did you know that elections in Britain and the US are marred by mass fraud? At least that would be the inescapable  conclusion if they were to be subjected to the most popular methods to “prove” that Russian elections are rigged in favor of Putin and United Russia. Below I have a translated a delightful […]

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The Provincialization Of Russian Electoral Fraud

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on March 5, 2012 .12 Comments

Analysis of the election data is now trickling in, so I feel I can now make some real preliminary estimates of the degree of fraud (eventually, I will compile a list of estimates as I did for the 2011 elections). My assessment is that in these elections it was on the order of 3%-4%, which […]

My (Second) Article On The Russian Elections At Al Jazeera

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for , on March 4, 2012 .4 Comments

Here it is: Reading the Russian election. Please comment at their site, rather than here, if possible.

And The Wheel Spins On

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on February 18, 2012 .8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvAYV6-ZN0I&w=480&h=360] “Despite it being a sad and fearful prospect, in my opinion a totalitarian reversion for a certain period of time is possible. But the danger lies not in the law enforcement agencies, the power organs, and not even the Army, but in our own mentalities – our people’s, our population’s, in ourselves. It all seems […]

Is The US Still A Liberal Democracy?

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on January 23, 2012 .23 Comments

In the years since 9/11, the US has built a mosaic of national security powers that undermine its claim to be the “land of the free.” According to this useful summary by Jonathan Turley, these include: Assassination of its own citizens; warrantless searches; use of secret evidence and secret courts; the rise of an unaccountable surveillance state […]

The Argument For Compulsory Voting In Russia

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on December 30, 2011 .27 Comments

One of the central (I would argue, the central) conundrum of all discussions about Russian elections fraud at the macro-scale is that the major pieces of evidence simply don’t fit together. On the one hand, you have pre-elections polls that uniformly gave United Russia 50% or more of the vote; in fact, the last Levada and VCIOM […]

Measuring Churov’s Beard: The Mathematics Of Russian Election Fraud

This about Politics, tagged , , , , , was written by for on December 26, 2011 .29 Comments

In the aftermath of the 2011 Duma elections, the Russian blogosphere was abuzz with allegations of electoral fraud. Many of these were anecdotal or purely rhetorical in nature; some were more concrete, but variegated or ambiguous. A prime example of these were opinion polls and exit polls, which variably supported and contradicted the Kremlin’s claims that fraud was […]

My Article On The Russian Elections At Al Jazeera

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for , on December 11, 2011 .57 Comments

The long-promised post is out, but not here but at Al Jazeera: Truth and falsifications in Russia. It has also been translated into Russian at Inosmi.ru (Правда и фальсификации в России). In the spirit of democracy, I am adopting Alexander Kireev’s poll (kireev) to ask you guys what YOU think about how falsified these elections were. Please read the […]

Are Russian Elections Rigged?: Opinion Polls Speak Louder Than Western Rhetoric

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on June 18, 2011 .56 Comments

The notion that Russian elections are systemically rigged to keep the “party of power” in, well, power is so prevalent and accepted in journalistic, political, and academic discourse in the West that it has little need of supporting documentation. Taking the 2007 Duma elections as an example, they were described as “not fair” by OSCE, “managed” by […]

Measuring Democracy I: Introducing the Karlin Freedom Index (KFI)

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on August 29, 2010 .26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to make an in-depth study of the 3 major “freedom indices” – Polity IV (the most objective one), the Economist Democracy Index (fairly arbitrary) & Freedom in the World (a purely ideological project) – for more than 2 years now, but have yet to come round to it. Though it remains on […]