St. Petersburg finally fixed the huge gap in their metro system. It only took them nine years! The metro tunnel collapsed in 1995 after it was flooded by a subterranean river, and since then residents have had to use several modes of transportation to get around the city. When I was in St. Pete, the metro stop located on our campus was useless because it was cutoff from the rest of the system. We had to take a bus to another station, Lesnaya...was quite annoying. The re-opening of the completed line was a big deal - Putin even dropped by for a visit!
John Paul Jones, the founder of the U.S. Navy, served in the Russian navy:
For the British, he is "Pirate Paul Jones," feared and fearsome raider of the British coastline. Yet for a time he was Pavel Zhones, Kontra-Admiral in the navy of Empress Catherine the Great, and, later, resident of St. Petersburg.
Jones' legacy in Russia is ambiguous, as was the rest of his life. Catherine gave him the admiral's rank that he never received in the United States, yet he was constantly handicapped by the supervision of Catherine's favorite Grigory Potemkin. Jones was loved by the Russian sailors under his command, yet he was never accepted by the aristocracy of St. Petersburg. And although he left Russia in disgrace, he always longed to return and wrote letters to Catherine for the rest of his life.
Don't want to take the Moscow metro? In the future you may be able to take a helicopter taxi across the city.
London: Moscow on the Thames?
Suddenly, it seems, Russians are everywhere in Britain, London especially, as the nation becomes a magnet for the newly rich and super-rich who are looking for a safe haven for their money and the opportunity to buy into the essence of Western class and respectability.
They are competing against each other for the most expensive houses in the country. One billionaire has bought Chelsea Football Club and some of the world's most expensive soccer talent, and others are basing themselves in London to buy and sell businesses in global oil, gas and metals. Russian businessmen (almost all men) and their families are putting their children into some of Britain's most expensive private schools and spending huge sums at fashion houses, on art, and in restaurants. So much Russian is heard on London streets that Hampton Court Palace -- 16th Century home of King Henry VIII -- is about to add a Russian language version to its walk-around electronic guide.
Excellent...more Russians in London = more Russian restaurants that I can eat at (let's face it, English food sucks). Oh, and maybe I can practice my pitiful Russian language skills while I'm over there.
Harvard may have to repay $34 million to the U.S. government! Ouch!
Harvard may have to repay millions of dollars to the government after a judge ruled that two of its employees advising Russian authorities on privatization violated conflict-of-interest rules.
The lawsuit arose out of work by the Harvard Institute for International Development in the 1990s to help the country shape its post-Communist government into a modern, capitalist system. The U.S. Agency for International Development gave Harvard about $34 million for the "Russia Project."
Hay and Shleifer were advising the country on restructuring its economy. At the same time, they and their families allegedly made several hundred thousand dollars in investments in companies Hay and Shleifer were helping the Russian government regulate.
Sucks to be you, Haaaahvuhd.
Just who did smash Communism? Excellent article by GW professor James Hershberg. He takes on the "Reagan victory school" and discusses the real reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also, check out the Q&A session with Hershberg regarding his article. I got a laugh out of this guy:
Washington, D.C.: Mr. Hershberg, the kids at GW are getting a lousy education if you're teaching them what is in your article. Ronald Reagan didn't just carry on containment, he instituted a revolutionary policy: Rollback of the Soviet empire. And it worked, much to the pain of liberals everywhere.
Thanks for the belly laughs while reading your article.
James G. Hershberg: You're certainly entitled to your opinion. Actually, at GWU, at this as on other issues, I try to give students various alternative major interpretations, suggest further readings, and urge them to decide for themselves. (And sometimes make them do so on mid-terms and finals.) But if my own views provoke them to argue their own, and best of all to dig deeper into the subject, that's fine.
Yes, I must have received a lousy education at GW since I refuse to fall in line with the "Reagan ended the Cold War" cult!
And finally, the Pro-Putin youth group "Moving Together" is picketing the offices of Western media companies in Moscow:
The pro-Kremlin youth group Moving Together is picketing the Moscow offices of Reuters, The Associated Press, Agence France Presse, the BBC and Bloomberg, accusing them of failing to report about corruption in the Russian media.
[Group members] Fomin and Ryabchenko acknowledged, however, that they were not familiar with the Western organizations' reports.
"I don't read a lot and especially not in English. I do not know what they write, but our organization has given us complete details about it," Ryabchenko said.
Fomin added, "I'm young, after all, and like any young person I don't have any time to read the news."
Classic...
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