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Russia

Letter from Russia – Planet Kirsan

April 24th, 2006 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF Inside a chess master's fiefdom.
by Michael Specter

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is not your typical post-Soviet millionaire Buddhist autocrat. He is the ruler of Kalmykia, one of the least well known of Russia's twenty-one republics. He also happens to be president of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, or FIDE, the governing body of world chess. Ilyumzhinov functions a bit like the Wizard of Oz. Instead of a balloon, though, he uses a private jet. In Kalmykia, a barren stretch of land wedged between Stavropol and Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea, you can't miss the man: his picture dominates the airport arrivals hall, and billboards all along the rutted road that leads to Elista, the capital, show him on horseback or next to various people he regards as peers—Vladimir Putin, the Dalai Lama, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II. Read more »

The Devastation

October 11th, 2004 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF Since 1965, life expectancy for Russian men has decreased by nearly six years. And now there is AIDS.
by Michael Specter

The first days of spring are electrifying in St. Petersburg. The winters are hard and dark and long, and when the light finally returns each year thousands of people pour onto Nevsky Prospekt and into the squares in front of the Winter Palace and St. Isaac's Cathedral. Read more »

Book Review: “Midnight Diaries” by Boris Yeltsin

November 26th, 2000 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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Reviewied by Michael Specter

By the last days of the last millennium, there was very little left that Boris Yeltsin could do to astonish the people of Russia. He had embraced more than a half-dozen prime ministers and scores of senior aides during his decade of power — only to toss them one by one from the Kremlin bell tower. In 1991, when he stood on the top of a tank to stare down a coup, his impulsiveness was heroic. Two years later, when he shelled a mutinous parliament into submission, it still seemed understandable. Read more »

Book Review: “Archangel” by Robert Harris

February 14th, 1999 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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Reviewed by Michael Specter

The cold war wasn't good for much, but it certainly was a terrific time for thrillers: the East and West were so neatly divided, the atmosphere so ominously noir, and everything fit so well into a world in which the angels of democracy were destined always to live in conflict with the alluring tug of the devil. Read more »

My Boris

July 26th, 1998 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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As one of the few remaining people with frequent access to the increasingly volcanic President of Russia, Valentin Yumashev knows when to step lightly. So it was with careful planning–and a slightly queasy stomach–that the Kremlin chief of staff decided to present an important document to Boris Yeltsin one day this spring. Read more »

Contraband Women – A Special Report

January 11th, 1998 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women
by Michael Specter

RAMLE, Israel–Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. Read more »

At a Western Outpost of Russia, AIDS Spreads ‘Like a Forest Fire’

November 4th, 1997 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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KALININGRAD, Russia, Oct. 29 The young man sitting before the psychiatrist stared darkly at the wall and bit his lip to keep from crying. He had answered a dozen questions about his sexual habits and absorbed in silence a lecture about how AIDS would change his life. Read more »

Pristine Russian Far East Sees Its Fate in Gold

June 9th, 1997 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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ESSO, Russia–The basic view from this mountain village hasn't changed for 7, 000 years, since a giant reservoir of molten lava crested over to form the mighty peak of Asia's largest and most active volcano. Eagles and falcons dance through the crisp air. Not far away, the world's biggest population of grizzly bears– shaking off their winter slumber–forage for salmon as big as dogs. Read more »

Moscow on the Make

June 1st, 1997 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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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 »

Forgotten Victim of Chechnya: Russian Army

January 19th, 1997 | Posted in New York Times, Articles | No Comments
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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 »