Russia - Dissent Magazine

The Petrostate Secretary

David S. Painter ▪ February 1, 2017

Rex Tillerson’s confirmation as Secretary of State threatens a return to a foreign policy driven by the pursuit of oil, whatever the human and environmental cost.

Systems of government are scraping against each other like continents grinding at a fault line. The noise they make announces a new world disordered. These clashes are not just because of Vladimir Putin or the new hard-line Chinese leadership of …

Authoritarian Democracy: A Playbook

Nick Robinson ▪ November 14, 2016

From India to Turkey to the Philippines, authoritarian-leaning leaders of major world democracies have refined a set of strategies to make their countries less democratic. Here are five common tactics to watch out for.

Prepare For Regime Change, Not Policy Change

Turkuler Isiksel ▪ November 13, 2016

Lessons from the autocrats’ toolkit.

Returning to Maidan

Sophie Pinkham ▪ Fall 2016

In the early days, the Maidan protests had been something like a people’s national liberation festival. But by 2014, with war erupting in the east, euphoria and solidarity had been replaced by grief and anger.

China and Russia Revisited

Jeffrey Wasserstrom ▪ April 23, 2016

By the early 1990s, the contrasts between the world’s two former Communist giants seemed to far outweigh the similarities. Twenty years later, the countries have a surprising amount in common again.

Surreality TV

Keith Gessen ▪ Summer 2015

In his new book, Peter Pomerantsev depicts Russia as a place that has descended into a madness fed by the television programs that it itself inspires. But a crucial element is missing.

Victory Day Turned Sour

Maria Repnikova ▪ May 20, 2015

As I was heading to Lynn, Massachusetts to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War with my eighty-seven-year-old Russian grandmother, the last thing on my mind was the war in Ukraine, and what it might mean for the commemoration of this event today.

[VIDEO] Asia and Dissent in a Time of Strongman Leaders

Editors ▪ April 16, 2015

In February, Dissent and the India-China Institute co-hosted a panel on “Asia and Dissent in a Time of Strongman Leaders” at the New School, with Alexis Dudden speaking on Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Nina Khrushcheva on Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ross Perlin on China’s Xi Jinping, and Sanjay Ruparelia on India’s Narendra Modi. The panel was moderated by Dissent editorial board member Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

[EVENT] Asia and Dissent in a Time of Strongman Leaders

Editors ▪ February 23, 2015

Please join us this Thursday in NYC for a roundtable discussion with experts on China, India, Japan, and Russia, hosted by the India-China Institute at the New School. Moderator: Jeff Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s professor of History, University of California at Irvine; …

Japan’s Island Problem

Alexis Dudden ▪ Fall 2014

How U.S. policy, ancestral wounds, and international law have led to an era of ocean imperialism

On Socialist Realism

Anonymous ▪ Winter 1960

Translated by George Dennis, this article, written in poetic prose by an anonymous Russian writer, is presented here in its first full English translation.

Kafka In Russia

Gustav Herling-Grudzinski ▪ July – August 1966

Kafka’s recent entry into Russia has a history of its own. For several decades the visionary from Prague belonged—theoreticall he still belongs—to the Unholy Trinity of Proust, Joyce, and Kafka. This Trinity has been condemned in Russia on every possible …