Natalie Sarkic-Todd / 27 Mar 2023

Restoring Stalin

The House on the Embankment

Seventy years after his death, the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin was unexpected. Yet however you analyse it, when a government spends decades glorifying a genocidal dictator and only later admits their crimes, we shouldn’t be surprised by a comeback.(...)

Heather Allansdottir / 15 Aug 2022

Universitet Lessons

Russia After the Arab Spring

In 2015, I moved to Moscow to spend a year teaching human rights. I lasted five months. As my former students from that time are arrested for protesting the Ukrainian war, here are some reflections on what I learned about the evil of Putin and the kindness of Russians.(...)

Heather Allansdottir / 25 Jul 2022

Odesa Mama

Utopia by the Sea

The Russians have struck Odesa again, this time mere hours after reaching a deal with the Ukrainians. Though spared the worst of the war, an attack on Odesa is an attack on the best of Ukrainian and Russophone culture alike.(...)

Ernst Stetter / 20 May 2022

Lessons From the Ukraine War

The European Union and China

It’s been one horror story after another. Since Vladimir Putin first invaded Ukraine, the press has been deluged with reports of raw materials shortages and Europe’s reliance on Russian energy imports.(...)