Russia & Its Neighbors in the 21st Century

I. The Collectivist Russian

Soul

II. Top-down Politics &

Corruption

III. Reflections of the Past

Standard Russian

icon image the “Mother & Child”

“On the mir (communal farm)” by

Sergei Korovin

(1858-1908)

Post-Soviet Russia

Video Link:

• Corruption in Putin’s Russia: “Russia’s Youtube Whistle Blower” (NY Times video, January 2011)

An “inebriated Boris Yeltsin on the campaign trail in Rostov-on-the-Don” (1996—A.P. photo)

Boris Yeltsin

resigned as Russia’s president

on the New Year in

2000

Vladimir Putin, b.

1952; formerly of

the KGB and Russian Security

Forces (FSB)

Ukrainian President Victor Lushenko before and after a poisoning during his 2005 campaign (photos only weeks apart).

Anna Polit-

kovskaya (1958-206),

Russian investi-gative

journalist assass-

inated in October

2006

Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006), former KGB agent and critic of Vladimir Putin’s government who died in

England due to a mysterious poisoning.

Video Link:

• Russian dissident and anti-Putin activist Alexander Litvenenko at the Frontline Club in London in November 2006, commenting on the recent death of Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and US President George W. Bush in Tbilisi in 2005

Georgia’s new oil

pipeline, which began operation in

2005, was funded

mainly by BP and bypasses Russia’s oil

pipeline.

FOX News cuts short interview with Georgians