Free Republic

Speaking in Crimea on August 14, Vladimir Putin recalled that the peninsula had been the last refuge of the anti-Bolshevik White Russian army in 1920 before it fled Russia, bringing the Russian Civil War to an end. Formerly a site of fratricidal conflict, the Crimea should become a site of “reconciliation between Reds and Whites,” said Putin, a call which paralleled his appeal for an end to the conflict in Ukraine. The Soviet Union collapsed only 22 years ago, so there are still some old Reds floating about, but there certainly aren’t any of the original Whites, the last of...

MOSCOW—Russian authorities this month offered to allow a demonstration by opposition activists in Moscow's Triumphal Square on Saturday, after more than a year of harshly suppressing such protests. But the concession they demanded—exclusion of the protests' original architect—threatens to split the movement, activists said. Though the organizers rejected the offer for this month—and were denied a permit for the demonstration—debate over whether to accept the authorities' terms in the future rages on the Web and Moscow radio talk shows.