Two years after the massive persecution of sexual minorities, a new crackdown on LGBTQ people in Russia’s Chechnya region appears to be in the making. In January, two queer people were killed and nearly forty detained, as reported by the Guardian. The cause of death was allegedly police torture.
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Last Friday, mosques throughout the northern Caucasus commemorated the 75th anniversary of the mass deportation of the Karachays to Central Asia by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Between November 2 and November 5, 1943, some 70,000 Karachais, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group of the North Caucasus, were deported in cattle train cars to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, because they allegedly collaborated with Nazi Germany.
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Moscow, Russia’s sprawling capital of 12.36 million, has a waste problem. The city has no recycling system: all the city’s waste goes to landfills. Rubbish sent to landfills has increased by 30% over the past ten years. These landfills were originally located outside of Moscow, but due to encroachment are now within the city’s borders.
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One of the most ambitious building experiments in history is nearing its end in many former Soviet states. Faced with severe housing shortages in the 1950s due to rapid population growth and urbanization, Soviet planners rolled out their first pre-fabricated, concrete panelled apartment buildings. By industrializing the building process, instead of using time-intensive masonry, housing stock throughout the Soviet block was rapidly expanded in the 1960s with these so-called Krushchyovkas, named after Soviet leader (1953-1964) Nikita Khrushchev.
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Since its independence in April 1991, the former Soviet republic of Georgia has been involved in not one but three armed conflicts. Simmering disputes within two regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, between local separatists and the majority Georgian population, have erupted into widespread inter-ethnic violence and wars.
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Those watching the FIFA World Cup’s final on TV may have barely noticed because producers immediately turned their cameras away from the field, but there was a pitch invasion during the game between France and Croatia. Veronica Nikulshina, Olga Kurachova, Pyotr Verzilov and Olga Pakhtusova, all members of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot, managed to run onto the field at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Dressed as police officers, they interrupted the game in the 52nd minute, forcing the referee to suspend play until stewards wrestled the activists off the field. The invasion happened as Russian President Vladimir Putin watched from the stands.
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It is a public secret that, through its state-funded multilingual television and radio networks, the Russian government has for years tried to influence the political situation in the former Soviet states. Networks like RT, formerly known as Russia Today, are notorious for biased news coverage that often borders on propaganda. These misinformation networks are not, however, only limited to traditional media and increasingly include social media, as well.
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“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With this quote, article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, opened the first issue of A Chronicle of Current Events. The Chronicle was one of the longest-running samizdat publications in the Soviet Union.
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Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin explained in a blog why he intended to vote for Putin — as he explained, despite falling oil prices and sanctions, Russia is back and moving forward thanks to Putin. While the Central Election Committee called the move “unethical,” it considered Sobyanin’s endorsement “a recognition of his love for the president” rather than illegal political campaigning.
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