Russia

by 2 comments on "The problems of Puffin Party security"

Here’s an interesting story of a Russian military intelligence officer deployed into Ukraine, apparently under plausibly-deniable cover, whose communications were meant to hide in plain sight among the chaotic noise of the Internet. Specifically, he’s a gamer and re-enactor in private life and he tried to use the channels of this subculture. Unfortunately for him,…

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by 0 comments on "Awww."

This post by an American sociology prof about going to Soviet summer camp is so sweet it seems harsh and rude to point out that he is completely wrong about this: I would love for the major players in the Crimean conflict to take a short bus trip over to Artek and spend a week…

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by 1 comment on "Where is Siberia? Well, I wouldn’t start from now…"

I have been reading Orlando Figes’ Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. Something I didn’t know, which I’m sure Erik Lund will like: Siberia moved. The original minor khanate of that name expanded to include the vast rich fur-bearing forests further east. As colonisation, and most of all, identity-changing, hybridity, and syncretism, proceeded, the…

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by 1 comment on "The reactionary Internet predates ‘t other un"

Here’s a post, first of a three-part series, from The Monkey Cage about inequality and power. The point Martin Gilens makes is that where a policy has broadly similar support across US income groups, its chance of being put into effect follows a well-behaved response curve with its approval rating. But a policy on which…

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by 0 comments on "Review: Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty"

The Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…

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by 1 comment on "Review: Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty"

The Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…

Read More Review: Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty