Russia

A personal journey through some of the darkest moments of the cold war and the early days of television news Marvin Kalb, the award-winning journalist who has written extensively about the world he reported on during his long career, now turns his eye on the young man who became that journalist. Chosen by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to become one of what came to be known as the Murrow Boys, Kalb in this newest volume of his memoirs takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news. Kalb captures the excitement of being present at the creation of a whole new way of bringing news immediately to the public. And what news. Cold War tensions were high between Eisenhower's America and Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Kalb is at the center, occupying a unique spot as a student of Russia tasked with explaining Moscow to Washington and the American public. He joins a cast of legendary figures along the way, from Murrow himself to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr among many others. He finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent of CBS News just as the U2 incident—the downing of a US spy plane over Russian territory—is unfolding. As readers of his first volume, The Year I Was Peter the Great, will recall, being the right person, in the right place, at the right time found Kalb face to face with Khrushchev. Assignment Russia sees Kalb once again an eyewitness to history—and a writer and analyst who has helped shape the first draft of that history.

Collection of incoming and outgoing correspondence between the British and Foreign Office of Russia.

Offers an introduction to contemporary Russian politics, economics, society, and culture.

The Russian economy is an enigma to the West. Is it a sleeping giant or on the point of break-up and collapse? This collection of papers offers a broad-based overview of all aspects of Russian economic experience in the 1990s.

This report, the tenth national report report for Russia, deals with the adaptation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in the Russian context. Monitoring of the Millennium Development Goals, being currently customised by the Government for Russia, is a key step in the forthcoming implementation of the recommendations of the national report. Using the MDG concept, the authors of the report outline a set of priorities and goals characteristic of the current stage of reforms in Russia, as well as possible scenarios and progress indicators of the goals achievement by 2015. The report highlights existing problems and ongoing reforms in the sphere of human development.

In Russia, small-scale entrepreneurship has emerged in response to the collapse of state-ownership and unemployment in the early 1990s. Small businesses typically lack adequate collateral and credit history, making them 'unbankable' by the mainstream financial sector. To fund their businesses, micro-entrepreneurs are forced to rely on funds from family and friends, or money lenders. Microfinance institutions of four types have emerged to meet the unfulfilled financing needs of micro-entrepreneurs: commercial banks, specialized NGO-type microfinance institutions, membership-based institutions (such as rural cooperatives and credits unions), and public funds. All four types have enjoyed significant growth in Russia in the past five years, but the industry is still at an early stage of development. Demand appears to far outweigh supply. 'Microfinance in Russia' provides an overview of microfinance in Russia to date, presenting industry trends and identifying key challenges to sustainable growth of the industry.

A study of contemporary politics in Russia, assessing the attempted transition from totalitarianism to liberal democracy. It shows that although liberal institutions have been tentatively established, the weak social and cultural supports threaten the success of Russia's liberal project.

Neidhart convincingly argues that Russia is a different country from the Soviet Union, growing into a Western-style, middle-class society with a free market and a democratic polity. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Russia has never been able to escape its relationship with Europe, or Europe with Russia. Geography and history have conspired to make them both neighbors and unavoidable factors in each other’s daily lives. From the early 1700s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe and Moscow both relied on material power to balance against any threats emerging from East and West. More recently, Europe and the EU have adopted a different strategy: make Russia non-threatening by making it European, like “us.” Meanwhile, Russia’s resistance to Europe’s assimilationist mission is increasingly robust, fuelled by energy exports to Europe and the world. Contributors to this volume wrestle with the question of whether the European project is feasible, desirable, or even ethical.

"Independent Russia is approaching the start of its third decade of post-Soviet existence. After the economic chaos of the Boris Yeltsin decade and the recovery and stabilization of the Vladimir Putin decade, Russia's leaders have high ambitions for a return to great power status in the years ahead. Their aspirations are tempered, however, by the realities of Russia's social, economic, and military shortcomings and vulnerabilities, laid painfully bare by the stress test of the recent global financial crisis. Looking ahead, some also calculate that Russia will be increasingly challenged in the Far East by a rising China and in the Middle East by an Iran that aspires to regional hegemony.... As a result, Moscow is already seeking to strengthen Russia's ties with Europe and the United States. The West is seen as crucial to Russia's modernization as well as a hedge against what may develop to Russia's east and south in coming decades. This process of Russia's anchoring itself more firmly in the West will proceed with lots of tactical hiccups and sporadic crises. Nevertheless, it will bring consequences and opportunities for U.S. diplomacy and strategic development, some of which the Barack Obama administration's policy of 'reset' is already reaping. But Russian policy toward the United States is conditional on a U.S. approach that engages Russia in positive ways. If that policy were to change, it could push Russia and China closer together on some issues in an effort to constrain the United States."--P. 1

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE WINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD FINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR “Fast-paced and excellently written…much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable.” —New York Times “Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis.” –The Wall Street Journal The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversive information warfare, manipulating the media to destabilize its enemies. How did a country that embraced freedom and market reform 25 years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with America? A winner of the Orwell Prize, The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of Russia's stealthy and largely unchronicled counter revolution. A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin - his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. One of Putin's first acts was to reverse Gorbachev's decision to end media censorship and Ostrovsky argues that the Russian media has done more to shape the fate of the country than its politicians. Putin pioneered a new form of demagogic populism --oblivious to facts and aggressively nationalistic - that has now been embraced by Donald Trump.