· July, 2008

Below are posts about citizen media in Russian. Don't miss Global Voices по-русски, where Global Voices posts are translated into Russian! Read about our Lingua project to learn more about how Global Voices content is being translated into other languages.

Stories about Russian from July, 2008

Russia: Reaction to Captive Nations Speech

Former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar comments on the negative Russian reactions to US president's George Bush parallel between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in a recent speech celebrating the Captive Nations’ week. Idel-Ural Kray presents an alternative view (RUS) of the matter.

Latvia: European Court Goes Against Riga

Who has the right to pass judgment on what a man does in the service of his country during wartime and what should the legal grounds for such a verdict be? These are some of the key issues surrounding a legal process on WWII war crimes against a soviet veteran, Vasily Kononov, that has been dragged through the Latvian legal system since 1998. However, earlier this week, the European Court of Human Rights found that Latvia lacked legal grounds for prosecuting Kononov. Following the verdict, the Russian blogosphere has generally reacted with joy and relief, although there have also been some opposing voices.

Russia: Military Bases in Venezuela?

LJ community Politika v Rossii (RUS) conducts a survey on whether Russia should pick up on an offer by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to build military bases in Venezuela. So far, the results are that some 70% of respondents have been positive to the idea.

Abkhazia, Georgia: “Home”

As everyone seems to be talking about an impending war over Abkhazia, here is a translation of a post by LiveJournal blogger cyxymu, a Georgian who spent his childhood in Abkhazia but now lives in Tbilisi, having become an "internally displaced person" during the hostilities in the early 1990s.

Kazakhstan: Astana Anniversary

Bloggers discuss how the celebrations of the anniversary of Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, went. They were so widely advertised and loads of public finance was spent on the tenth anniversary of the capital, that most of the citizens - and bloggers - sighed with relieve when the whole fuss was over.

Transnistria: Voices of Tiraspol

In recent years, it seems like a solution to Moldova's long-unresolved secessionist conflict is always being forecast but never quite materializes. Meanwhile, the people who live in the unrecognized Transnistria just try to get by. At least a couple of the territory's netizens, however, seem unhappy with some of the initiatives of their de facto government. Lyndon Allin translates their posts.

Russia: One Year Sentence for Blog Comment

On July 7, Savva Terentyev, 22, a Russian blogger and musician, received a one-year suspended jail sentence for a comment he posted on Feb. 15, 2007, on the blog of a local journalist Boris Suranov. Below are rough translations of the comment and a small passage from the verdict, as well as an opinion poll on the impact of Terentyev's case on the freedom of expression in the Russian blogosphere.

Russia: Surkov on Joan Miró

IZO highlights an essay on Joan Miró, written for the Russian Pioneer magazine by Kremlin chief ideologist Vladislav Surkov – and re-published (RUS) by LJ user v_orlov. One reader asks (RUS): “What's next? An article by [PM Vladimir Putin] on [Mikhail] Bulgakov or [Fyodor] Dostoevsky? […]”

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