Free Republic

Dmitri Gasak, Chairman of the Transfiguration Fellowship of Minor Orthodox Brotherhoods, speaks about why it is that what happened in 1917 in Russia wasn’t just a change in the political system, but the beginning of a national and human catastrophe, as a result of which society has lost the ability to discern between good and evil, and why repentance is exactly the thing which will give the people back their bearings. The Transfiguration Fellowship is, in this 100th year since the Russian Revolution, running an initiative called “Calling our Nation to Repentance." More than a quarter century has passed since...

Russia is now experiencing its own “end of history,” but it has turned out to be “not liberal democracy but a new turn back to the enslavement of Russian society, the consequences of which will be its further degradation with prospects that are dangerous both for the country itself and for the entire world.” The West generally and the US in particular need to display both wisdom and political will to effectively oppose the political challenge the Kremlin now presents. It has been an unwelcome surprise for Western publics how well the Kremlin and its ‘information forces’ have studied the...

"For Russians disillusioned with their initial experience of capitalism and democracy, alternative history offered a therapy in which the problems of today gave way to new images of past glory." In 2009, we wrote a book entitled Nationalist Imaginings of the Russian Past. Anatolii Fomenko and the Rise of Alternative History. Its focus was the explosion of 'alternative' history, a publishing phenomenon that emerged in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The leading light in this movement was, and remains, Anatolii Fomenko, a Sovietera mathematician who claimed that the standard historical chronology was hopelessly inaccurate and...

Sometimes a state’s official view of the past can serve as the basis for an unwritten social contract between a government and its citizens. This is what is happening in Russia today. President Vladimir Putin has introduced the idea of what he terms a “thousand-year history” that Russians must take pride in, a history that incorporates many victorious pages from the country’s past, including Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. This glorious history is offered to citizens in exchange for their political loyalty, and it is presented as being more important than economic progress. Putin’s personal role has been critical...

Professional historians working under the Soviet Union found themselves in a pinch. Early on, authorities proved adept at seizing control of history and deploying it as propaganda drenched in Communist ideology. Scholars were given little space to challenge official versions of the past. So what was a historian to do? “People who cared about academic integrity almost never [studied] the Soviet Union,” says Maria Lipman, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “They would pick something medieval. Or, you know, ancient Rome.” History, the old dictum goes, has a way of repeating itself. Early this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin...

Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II neck and neck for title of greatest Russian Tony Halpin He sent millions to their deaths in the gulag, but that has not deterred Russians from voting en masse for Josef Stalin as the face of their nation. The Soviet tyrant and Second World War leader is battling Tsar Nicholas II for first place in The Name of Russia, a domestic version of the BBC series Great Britons. Stalin had been well ahead in the online vote until the show's producer appealed to members of a popular Russian social networking site to back Nicholas II....

Fate of Russia's lost art treasure revealed after 60-year cover-up John Ezard, arts correspondent Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Steven Spielberg would have called it Indiana Jones and the Eighth Wonder, and supplied a happy ending. In a damp cellar, guarded by deadly snakes and senile but savage SS men, the holy grail of Russian art treasures would triumphantly have been liberated. According to evidence disclosed today in Guardian Weekend, the truth is more squalid. Peter the Great's 18th century Amber Room, rated as the world's prime missing art treasure, valued at £150m, perished in the chaos of...

<p>May 9 (Bloomberg) -- An explosion in the Russian republic of Chechnya killed President Akhmad Kadyrov, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in televised comments at a meeting with Kadyrov's son, Ramzan Kadyrov.</p> <p>The blast killed four and wounded 42 others, said an official at the Emergency Situations Ministry who asked not to be named. The blast occurred at about 10:30 a.m. local time in a stadium in Grozny during Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, the official said.</p>

The KGB's massacre of Poles in Katyn is remembered Human rights groups in Russia are currently commemorating the millions who died as a result of political oppression in the Soviet era - but much of the country seems indifferent towards joining them. The vast majority of the deaths - estimated by some experts to number around 20 million - took place under Stalin. However, recent developments - including a plan by the mayor of Moscow to restore a statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, and the restoration of the tune of the old Soviet anthem - have stirred debate over...