Monday
Dawn, with its shafts of light and hints of redemption, doesn't really happen in Moscow. At some point the black of night dissolves into the gray of day. Long trucks full of beets, cabbage and the first spring melons start rumbling across the broken pavement to their destinations at scores of city markets. People rouse themselves, drink tea, then shuffle across the snowy ground to 500 trolley stops and subway stations. Read more »
BUDYONNOVSK, Russia, Jan. 15– Last August, Cpl. Sergei Valdov drove his tank into the worst battle of the Chechen war. Most of his platoon died in that final, desperate fight for Grozny, the capital. Corporal Valdov was lucky: he escaped with only a large piece of shrapnel in his leg. Read more »
Memoirs by Mikhail Gorbachev
Most correspondents who arrived in Moscow after the Soviet Union fell apart, myself included, admit at least to occasional pangs of envy. Those colleagues who were here before us witnessed a remarkable human achievement: they watched as a provincial man came to Moscow, gained control of the Kremlin, opened the darkest corners of Russian society, stopped the cold war and changed the world. Read more »
ALEKSANDR LEBED, the Russian peacemaker who has devoted his life to war, is rushing to Chechnya again, eager to conclude talks with his separatist adversaries and to end the searing conflict that his boss, President Boris N. Yeltsin, has summarily dumped in his lap. Read more »
10 years later, through fear, Chernobyl still kills in Belarus
SAVICHI, Belarus–This has been a cheerless decade for 18-year-old Svetlana Lebenok. She never finished school because there are no longer any schools around here to finish. Her three older brothers spend their days tethered to a vodka bottle. Her parents live like invalids. Read more »
Russian Fascism and the Making of a Dictator
by Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova
Reviewed by Michael Specter
THE Russian word bespredel is a slang term that basically means "anything goes." It is often used these days to describe the lawlessness raging in Russia, the sense that life is out of control and that while freedom is great, a little order wouldn't do any harm either. Bespredel is a word one needs to have at hand when contemplating the career of Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the theatrically extremist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party who has so powerfully influenced the course of Russian politics over the past few years. Read more »
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – In the diffuse, almost endless light of summer, it is hard to regard this city as a place of suffering. Few people could gaze at the noble mansions and monuments and easily summon thoughts of despair. Read more »
A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism.
by Gregg Easterbrook
Reviewed by Michael Specter
IT has been just 25 years since a group of long-haired, sandal-clad activists came up with the idea of Earth Day as a way to publicize the struggling environmental movement. But that's more than enough time for a revolution. The United States–a country where not long ago major rivers were so polluted they sometimes caught fire; where the signature bird, the bald eagle, was threatened with extinction; and where urban air became deadlier every year– has pursued environmental protection with a zeal reserved for only the gravest social problems. Read more »
TULA, Russia–Valery Yermokov's heart stopped beating as soon as he finished the quart of homemade vodka. A drug addict who could not possibly afford heroin, he had also injected a coarser opiate into his veins. Read more »
SAY WHAT YOU WILL about Vladimir Zhirinovsky, but the man knows how to throw a party. For his 48th birthday, "probably the last before I return this nation to its historic greatness, " as he put it that night, Russia's most compelling–and notorious– politician invited everybody from President Boris Yeltsin to a czarist honor guard in full battle dress to celebrate with him at Moscow's grandly decaying Budapest Restaurant. Read more »
Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998.
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