By Anna Pivovarchuk As Western media focuses on the Crimean crisis, Russia intensifies its assault on civil society. When Nikolai Gogol wrote about the winged troika in his 19th century masterpiece on provincial corruption, The Dead Souls, little did he know that he was creating a perennial image that would come to represent Russia for centuries […]
You have to be mad to oppose Putin. At least that is what a Moscow court ruled on Tuesday when it sentenced Mikhail Kosenko to be committed to a psychiatric hospital for his part in the anti-government protest. “The court has ruled to release Kosenko Mikhail Alexandrovich from criminal responsibility for insanely conducting actions forbidden […]
In this week’s shameless FPA self-promotion, my piece about Pussy Riot somehow infiltrated today’s International Herald Tribune and got a few angry looks. So, is it hypocritical for Western mainstream media to champion a group of anarchist feminists over in Russia for behaviour that it would almost certainly not approve of at home? Read on […]
A few months ago, few Americans had heard of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk band turned latest icon of the anti-Putin opposition. That’s because the band was known under a different name in the US press: ‘P***y Riot’. In an amusing and predictable turn of events, the same American newspapers have got busy accusing Putin […]