XANDER BLAKELY BLOG

Law on Language

The Russian Duma recently approved an absurd law that, like similarly silly French Laws, bans the use of rude, offensive and foreign words. The Russian press (much maligned in the West as not a truly free press) had a free for all with the law. This article in particular went out of its way to use as many foreign words as possible to lampoon the law. It also ridiculed one of the law’s supporters, Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky, who is the leader of a political party that has three foreign words in its four-word title, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. (My friend Dan likes to point out that the LDPR is not liberal, democratic, nor is it really even a party as much as it is a cult of personality...a very, very disturbed personality.)

And this press release from one of Russia’s truly liberal political parties, Yabloko (a proper Russian word that means ‘apple’), gets to the crux of the law's absurdity.

Sergei Mitrokhin (Yabloko) expressed bewilderment: the law forbids the use of "foreign words if there are common analogs in the Russian language". But the word "analog" itself is also of foreign origin.

Depopulation Crisis

The good news: Russia's birth rate is finally up to record levels.

The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union saw a dramatic drop in Russia's birth rate. (I tracked this statistic closely since I was the largest importer of condoms into Siberia during the same period.) As the years went by and few Russian babies appeared, there were cries--by adults--of an international conspiracy to depopulate Russia. But the sad truth is that abortion, the most common form of birth control during Soviet times, remained a modern Russian woman's first choice for birth control. The number of pregnancies ended by Russian doctors dwarfed the number of pregnancies (and infections of HIV) prevented from ever starting by the shipping containers full of condoms I managed to get to Siberia.

There was no international conspiracy, just extreme economic hardship that made having kids in Russia just too difficult for young parents. (Which is ironic given that demographers have observed a correlation between higher GDP/capita and lower birth rates, as witnessed in the US, Japan, Europe as opposed the high birthrates and low GDP/capita of, say, sub-Saharan Africa.)

The bad news: Russia's death rate also spiked to levels not seen since WWII.

The net result: Russia's population is at 143.1 million and still decreasing.

More revealing statistics.

Nation Building

Based on what the US did, or rather, didn’t do, in Russia after the fall of the genocidal Soviet regime, there is good reason to doubt whether the US will help rebuild Iraq after Saddam is gone. Nation building is just too boring, and, though it saves lives, even American lives, it doesn't garner American votes. (We get the government we deserve.)

In 1991 the Soviet Union underwent a regime change that US politicians and generals could have only dreamed of. So what did the US do with this historic opportunity? Not much. America’s attention waned along with the fighting in the streets of Moscow. Most Americans were too busy with Christmas shopping to turn on the TV and watch the dreaded red flag with the sickle and hammer pulled down and the Russian tri-color rise above the Kremlin on the 24th of December 1991. To our credit, and unlike the French did to the Germans after WWI, we didn’t rub victory in the face of Russians, who, after all, were both the real victims of communism and the victors over it. To our discredit, we didn’t do much of anything to help the new Russia land on its feet. We treated Russia like a welfare case, giving kopecks at a time when we were drowning in our own wealth.

The reason Japan and Germany quickly became democratic after WWII was that America helped immediately and generously. Now Japan and Germany are the 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world. Our generosity back then wasn’t pure altruism; it was motivated by enlightened self-interest.

To contain the spread of the Soviet Union, Japan and Germany had to be economically strong. So why, after 50 years of a tense, bi-polar stand off, were we so stingy with post-Soviet Russia? After all, wasn’t an economically strong Russia our best defense against the resurgence of a communist country with enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy, well, everything?

Perhaps it’s that we didn’t know what to support. I only wish we had had enough wisdom, and will, to pay the carpenter’s fees for rebuilding Russia’s courtrooms to support jury trials. For, although the Russian constitutional called for jury trials back in 1993, as this remarkable piece in the NYTimes points out, they are only now starting to take place. The delays being due to many things, but the most mundane and inexcusable is the legacy of Soviet courtrooms not having the physical space for juries. Also, if we’re feeling really generous, how about we subsidize the compensation Russian jurors receive (from $1.75 to $3.50 per day)?

After all, the limited use of jury trials has already brought down conviction rates from 99 percent to 88. This is a good thing if you think it is worse to imprison an innocent man than it is to let a criminal go unpunished.

In another, more recent, example of the US neglecting to win the peace after winning in war, This NYTimes piece describes President Karzai in Washington begging the US not to forget about Afghanistan if a war happens in Iraq. He also had to beg for money to pay the wages of troops that are going to defend the country from warlords after the US troops leave.

From the NYTimes:

Since shortly after 1917, when the new Soviet state outlawed juries, the fates of most accused Russians have been decided by three-member panels that served as judges, jurors and — sometimes — aides to the prosecution. As recently as 1996, the panels were grinding out convictions in 995 of every 1,000 criminal cases.

This winter — glacially, and sometimes grudgingly — their monopoly is starting to crack. An overhaul of Russia's criminal code, pushed through Parliament by President Vladimir V. Putin and adopted in July, gives defendants accused of the most serious crimes the right to demand a jury trial. It also guarantees them Western-style rights.

Much of that had already been written into Russia's Constitution in 1993. In 1999, after six years of fitful experiments, the nation's top court ordered the government to carry out the changes. But Parliament did not consider the legislation until last year. Even after the new criminal code became law, Parliament voted in December to delay the start of jury trials in 20 regions, including Moscow, because a decade's notice had still left officials unprepared.
In fact, there is a lot to prepare. By some measures, Russia's 20,000 judges are only half the number needed for the new system. Courtrooms must have jury boxes, microphones and other items. Juror lists must be compiled, and the jurors must be paid. Last year, an experimental trial in suburban Moscow stalled because the $1.75 per diem failed to lure jurors into the courtroom. The 2003 judicial budget was increased 25 percent $762 million.

Cruising in Russia

In browsing the latest online issue of Kommersant, the
best business-economic-entertainment paper in Russia (think of it as a combination of the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and Playboy), I stumbled across an article about celebrity Aleksei Kortnev taking a PT Cruiser for a week-long test drive in Moscow. Kortnev is the lead singer for Neshastni Slyuchi, which translates as Accident, as in car accident. Think of 'Accident' as a combination of Harry Connick jr., Dave Mathews, and Soul Coughing. I know, it's an odd combo, but it works. Well enough for them to be one of the most famous, and well regarded, bands in Russia. If the idea of a famous Russian musician taking an infamous American cartoon car for a test drive in Moscow doesn't make you smile, Kortnev's comments will.

He starts by praising the Cruiser for how quickly the car heats up, not a trivial matter during the cold Moscow winter. But then complains that it doesn't have seat warmers. (So much for the image of Russians as hearty, masochistic, ice eaters.) He claims to never smoke in the car, but heaps praise on the car's ingenious ash tray. He's surprised, pleasantly, that such innovation comes from, of all people, the notoriously anti-smoking Americans. He also appreciated the two cigarette lighters (one for igniting smokes, one for charging cell phones) and one behind the rear seat (for reasons he doesn't bother to guess). After his wife 'privatizes' the car for much of the week, he determines that it's a chick car. Also, it still suffers from the defect that all cars suffer from: you can't drive it while drunk.

The article is in a Kommersant spin-off magazine, Avtopilot. Fast cars, naked women, and more fast cars. If anybody has any doubt about the Russian soul being incompatible with individualism, hedonism, and capitalism should look at this magazine.

US Neglects/Russia Humiliates

North Korea has been trying desperately to get the attention of the United States with bellicose threats. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il is getting humiliating attention from Russia with news headlines fit for the president of a PTA, not the president of the DPRK.

MOSCOW TO CELEBRATE NORTH KOREAN LEADER'S 60TH BIRTHDAY WITH ARTS & CRAFTS SHOW
MOSCOW, February 12 /from RIA Novosti's Yevgenia Molchanova/ - Examples of Korean arts and crafts will be displayed at Moscow's Novy Manezh exhibition center ahead of Kim Jong-il's birthday, February 16. The North Korean leader is turning 60 this year. Oil paintings, watercolors, embroideries, and ceramics will form the bulk of the exposition. Korean artists give realistic and detailed polychromatic representations of natural landscapes, celebrating the beauty of their country's scenery.

Placed on show along with decorative artwork will be photographs of Kim attending various functions and public events. Visitors will also be able to see photographs featuring Korean customs and traditions.

The exhibition opens Thursday, February 13.

Revealing Statistics

Usually there are two types of statistics: those that bore and those that lie. However, when several boring but true statistics are juxtaposed, often they become much more interesting and insightful. The Harper's Index is the most famous, perhaps infamous, example of this technique. Using this technique, plus the Jeopardy answer-then-question format, I decided to put together my own index below:

• 890,000: Number of inmates in Russia's prisons in 2002.
  
• 1,312,354: Number of inmates in US prisons in 2000.
  

• 118: Number of Russian sailors lost in the Kursk accident.
  
• 129: Number of dead in Moscow's theater siege last fall.
  
• 90: Average number of accident fatalities on Russia's roads...everyday.

• $10,881,700,000: Total exports from Siberia in 2002.
  
• $10,800,000,000: Exports from California in 2001...to Canada alone.
  
• 15,531,000 sq. mi: Size of Siberia (including Russian Far East).
  
• 15,081,000 sq. mi: Size of the United States (including Alaska).
  

• 16.3: Number of deaths (per 1,000) in Russia in 2002
  
• 9.8: Number of births (per 1,000) in Russia in 2002 (up from 9.1 in 2000)
  
• 8.7: Number of deaths(per 1,000) in the US in 2000
  
• 14.2: Number of births(per 1,000) in the US in 2001

• 24.18: Number of deaths(per 1,000) in Botswana in 2001 (hightest in the world)
  
• 48.79: Number of births(per 1,000) in Mali in 2001 (hightest in the world)

  
  

  
  
  • Hawaii: The most Southern State in the US.
    
  • Alaska: The most Northern State in the US.
    
  • Alaska: The most Western State in the US. (Aleutian Islands)
    
  • Alaska: The most Eastern State in the US (The Aleutians Islands again)
    
  Posted by Xander at 08:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I hope the Russians Love their Children

The eXile, a bastard lovechild of a newspaper (part Onion, part Slate) sired by brilliant, bitter and irreverent expatriates living in Moscow, has a piece on Solnyshko, an absolutely horrific but relatively well-off orphanage in the remote (even by Russian standards) Amurskaya Oblast. I’m no supporter of communism or other zero-sum, Robin-Hood economic policies, but it does strike me as particularly callous and even dangerous for the US Administration to be cutting off aid to Russia (for it's economic success, no less) while simultaneously and relentlessly advancing tax breaks for the richest people (as they are clearly over burdened) of the richest country in all human history.

Sting, in one of his most annoying songs, worried aloud that we were in danger of incineration if the Russians didn't love their children. Well, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

From:
The eXile
Bleak House
By Jake Rudnitsky ( jake@exile.ru )

“Visiting these kids is a truly sobering experience. Their condition is a far more direct and painful evidence of modern Russia’s complete degradation and moral bankruptcy than the looting of the country during market reforms, the lack of fundamental rights such as health care and heat, or even the war in Chechnya. Because, while these well-publicized crimes are abstract issues for the people who perpetrate them, the problem of orphans is an intensely personal and individual one. That these kids’ parents are alive and have inflicted such cruelty on their own children is mind-numbing.”

Animating Capital

The Moscow Times has a story highlighting one more quiet battlefield victory in Russia’s uncelebrated war for civil society. The battle over bureaucracy. Economist Hernando de Soto, in his most recent book, The Mystery of Capital, which I reviewed in the Industry Standard back in December 2000, makes a compelling case that a) legitimizing the assets of the poor and b) limiting bureaucracy to small businesses are crucial steps to elevating the tired, huddled masses from the bottom rung of the world economy.

Thus, I couldn't be happier about this line from the MT article:

"Competition became a bigger problem than bureaucracy for the first time," said Andrei Dvorkovich, deputy economic development and trade minister.

Industry Standard

Reanimator
By Alexander Blakely
Issue Date: Dec 04 2000

By Alexander Blakely

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Communism surrenders. Capitalism triumphs. And yet the Third World persists. In fact, as former communist countries atrophy into destitution, the Third World is actually growing in membership and hardship. For those who believe in the power of a market system, why capitalism hasn't panned out for the world's poorest nations remains a mystery.

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has spent a great deal of time trying to solve that mystery, and has garnered acclaim for his market-friendly theories in the process. Time magazine called him a "leader for the new millennium" and Fortune selected him as one of the 50 most stimulating thinkers of the 1990s. He is also the founder of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy - a think tank dedicated to helping developing countries actually develop.

And now, in his pioneering book The Mystery of Capital, de Soto sheds light not only on the Third World's inability to embrace prosperity but also on the West's remarkable ability to perpetuate it.

De Soto's guiding principle is the idea of "animating" capital. In his first book, The Other Path, de Soto found that the poor have unexpected amounts of assets. According to de Soto's calculations, real estate holdings in the Third World are worth $9.3 trillion. That's $2,325 per person. The catch is, the world's poor cannot leverage these assets to raise their standard of living. They have capital, but they can't unlock its real value. The reason for this, de Soto concludes, is that although the poor may physically hold assets, they don't legally own them.

The Mystery of Capital takes this idea and runs with it. Unless an asset is legally owned, it is "dead capital." Without a title, a house is just a temporary shelter. Without a deed, land is only as valuable as what can be stripped from it today. To animate capital, ownership must be fixed on paper and enforced by law. A legal homeowner can borrow money against the value of his home. A legal landowner can confidently invest in the land, and not recklessly extract from it.

But most poor nations have byzantine legal systems that isolate people from legitimate property. De Soto describes how it took his researchers 32 months to get legal approval from 11 agencies to open a manufacturing facility in Peru. The same task took three hours in Tampa, Fla. Then there are the 168 steps (and 13 to 25 years) necessary to legally own property in the Philippines.

In an example closer to home, de Soto examines the United States Homestead Act of 1862 to reveal how developing, agrarian nations can propel themselves toward prosperity. The Homestead Act, it turns out, didn't open the floodgates for mass migration into the Western frontier; the people were already there, illegally. What it did was turn millions of rebellious squatters into legitimate landowners overnight. In effect, it created vast amounts of capital.

De Soto's ideas are particularly significant as we explore yet another frontier in the form of cyberspace. Indeed, for a book about global poverty, it is a remarkably inspiring read. The Mystery of Capital supports Adam Smith's assertion that capital is the bedrock of the wealth of nations. But it also bolsters Marx's claims that the estrangement of people from das kapital is what keeps the poor down.

>Anybody who can make a case that both Smith and Marx were right should either be ignored categorically or listened to very, very carefully.

New Space Race

There is an anecdote that the Russians love to tell because it is both self-deprecating and a backhanded compliment to their former-rivals-then-partners-now-patrons in the US. It goes something like this: Since pens don’t work in the zero-g conditions of space, NASA spent years developing a 0G pen. When the American scientists proudly revealed their million-dollar ‘space-age’ pen, the Russians were impressed. The American scientists inquired whether the Russian had a pen that worked in space. The Russians collectively shrugged their shoulders. “No,” they admitted. “Our cosmonauts use pencils.”

Today, with the grounding of the Space Shuttles, which American engineers still proudly declare as ‘the most complicated machine ever built my man’, the relatively dumb Russian rockets are left with the job of supplying the International Space Station (another hyper-complicated machine of dubious value). And, with the Shuttles out of commission, the only way down from the ISS is a Russian Soyuz landing pod (think of C3PO and R2D2 in the opening scenes of the 1977 Star Wars film).

From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor

"The Russian Space Agency's budget, $265 million last year, is dwarfed by
NASA's $15.5 billion annual allocation."

…The shuttle catastrophe follows a string of accidents with Europe's Ariane rockets, the only other space program potentially capable of resupplying the ISS. In December, an unmanned Ariane-5 lifter, with two satellites, exploded on its launchpad in a $500-million major setback for Europe's space aspirations."

Nightmare Reveals Dream

What could unite people from a nation with a history of religious Puritanism, people from an atheist nation that is history, and a religious people that have been without a nation for most of their history? Answer: Death and Science, not necessarily in that order.

From the Baltimore Sun
Amid prayers, a few tears and the playing of three national anthems -American, Israeli and Russian - the astronauts, cosmonauts and others at yesterday's memorial service sought solace from their colleagues. A similar ceremony is scheduled for today at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Siberia vs. California

Siberia is gigantic. It contains 1/12th of the Earth's landmass. According to Novosti, Siberia exported almost $11B (that's two ones and nine zeros) in 2002. By contrast, in 2001 the State of California, which is the 3rd largest state but only 1/10th the size of Siberia, had exports of the same amount ($10.8B)...to Canada alone.

Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому региону за 2002 год составил 12,7 млрд долларов

04.02.03 13:09

НОВОСИБИРСК, 4 февраля. /Корр. РИА "Новости" - Сибирь Наталья Решетникова/. Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому таможенному управлению /СТУ/ за 2002 год составил 12 млрд 778,3 млн долларов. В том числе экспорт - 10 млрд 881,7 млн долларов /85,2 проц от объема товарооборота/, импорт - 1 млрд 896,6 млн долларов /14,8 проц/.
Как сообщили во вторник корреспонденту РИА "Новости" в пресс-службе СТУ, по сравнению с 2001 годом стоимостной объем экспорта увеличился на 4,7 проц, а объем импорта снизился на 9,1 проц. В результате прирост товарооборота составил 2,4 проц.

По данным пресс-службы, из 116 стран - партнеров по внешней торговле /в 2001 году их было 120/ ведущими являются страны дальнего зарубежья. Торговля с ними обеспечила 89,2 проц стоимостного объема экспорта и 56,3 проц - объема импорта. Основными партнерами Сибири являются Китай, Великобритания, США, Япония, Нидерланды, Германия, Индия, Турция, Польша.

Среди стран СНГ главные партнеры по внешней торговле - Казахстан и Украина с удельным весом в объеме товарооборота 13,6 проц.

Women Drivers

It's hard to come up with a more telling statistic of Moscow's rising economic tide than the number of automobiles on the streets of the Russian capital. An increase of 500,000 cars (25%) over a 4 year period, many of them driven by women, can mean only two things: 1) the Russian middle class is finally becoming a reality and 2) the reality is gridlock.

Christian Science Monitor
February 5, 2003
Taking the wheel puts women in the hot seat
In capitalist Russia, more women are on the road - and driving men crazy
By Claudia Kolker

The worried woman hunches at the wheel as if bracing for a crash and peers
warily at the clogged highway. Plastered on her rear window, a perky
sticker showing a high-heeled shoe implores all drivers behind her:
"Respect me!'"

It's a wilderness out there for Moscow's women drivers.

In Soviet times, economics kept most Russians from owning cars, and custom
kept most women from taking the wheel. But with the advent of capitalism,
prosperity began refashioning Moscow. Although interrupted by an economic
implosion in 1998, the boom has resumed. And as salaries and consumer
spending have increased, so have the traffic jams caused by the swarms of
new vehicles on the capital's roads. The number of cars in Moscow rose from
about 2 million in 1997 to 2.5 million in 2001.

While Russian agencies don't analyze car ownership by gender, the throngs
of drivers now include more women, motorists and officials agree.

Today, one driving instructor says, most students in a class of 12 are
female. A decade ago, only one or two women would surface in a class of the
same size.

The woman driver's emergence has fueled debate, ridicule, and at times
harassment in this forward-looking city with some very old-fashioned ways.

In self-defense, many women now paste triangular warning stickers on their
car windows. Besides the high-heeled shoe, there's a picture of a girl in a
bouffant hairdo, and the Cyrillic letter, "Sh," standing for "student
driver." There's even a sticker with a teapot - a reference to Russian
slang for "bumbling amateur."

The stickers are supposed to prompt automotive gallantry, says auto-parts
vendor Mikhail Brizgin, who began selling them two years ago and now sells
about 10 a week.

But just as often, male drivers respond by honking, barking insults, or
cutting women drivers off in traffic.

Both sides seem to agree on one thing, however: Women really do drive
differently from men.

"I don't know how to put this so as not to offend," offers Roma Agishev, a
young male photographer. "Women are either oriented toward the rules they
learned in driving school, or guided by intuition to avoid risk. Here, at
least a third of the drivers don't follow rules at all. So safe driving
creates dangerous situations."

But bank manager Yevgeniya Volokva says it's men who make driving dangerous.

"Women drive more carefully and more slowly," she says. "They may have kids
in the car, and they're not as crazy. They're not showing off.''

The emergence of the woman driver reflects changes in the marketplace.

Though women worked during Soviet times, they tended to stay in the
background professionally. In today's Russia, businesswomen are in the
foreground of the capitalist landscape. And companies are hiring them for
career-track jobs, which often means travel.

"Women have started to live another way - as much more a part of society,"
says Olga Vazhbina, a young pharmaceutical company executive. "Driving
becomes really necessary if you want to work."

Ms. Vazhbina exemplifies the new businesswoman. She is also an object
lesson in the road shock experienced by some of Moscow's new female drivers.

After her firm assigned her a car three years ago, she ventured into the
capital's harrowing traffic - and soon after landed in a spectacular accident.

"I lost control of the wheel, then I lost the road altogether," she says.
"I hit 15 construction barrels on the way. Then I hit a big stone
construction barrier. Then I went over a fence... It was like a movie. When
it stopped, I escaped from the car, and I was OK. The car was on the edge
of a giant precipice."

She's back behind the wheel now, and pronounces herself a rather good driver.

In fact, a recent study indicated Moscow women drive more safely than men.

Post Regime-Change Politics

If (big if) the US military is successful in playing catalyst for regime change in Iraq, and if (another big if) the successive Iraqi government turns out to be democratic, not simply differently barbaric (think Pinochet), what will the US policy be towards fostering a healthy civil society there? Look at how the US now behaves toward Russia, a country that experienced self-imposed regime change from an internally repressive and externally oppressive government to a budding, but still fragile, democracy. Don't forget, while Iraq has lots of oil but no confirmed weapons of mass destruction, Russia has both.

RIA Novosti
2 Feb 03
"The US administration has announced its intention to gradually halt its financial aid to Russia, beginning with 2004, in view of the strengthening Russian economy."

WHITE HOUSE ACKNOWLEDGED RUSSIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH

WASHINGTON, February 4th, 2003 /RIA Novosti correspondent Arkady Orlov/ -- The US administration has announced its intention to gradually halt its financial aid to Russia, beginning with 2004, in view of the strengthening Russian economy.

This is stated in the covering letter of the White House's budgetary department to the US draft federal budget for 2004, which was submitted to US Congress on Monday.

Ten years after the start of the financial aid to Russia and a number of other republics of the former Soviet Union, the time has come to exclude them from the economic aid list as has been the case with many East European states, the document says.

As the information service of the Department of State reports, in 2002 and 2003 the American financial aid to Russia amounted to 159 million and 148 million dollars respectively. But the draft budget for 2004 allocates the sum of only 73 million dollars.

In comparison with this year, the financial aid by the United States to Russia will be cut by 32 percent and later on will be stopped at all. The US will only contribute to the programmes for strengthening democracy and a civil society.

In the opinion of the American analysts, the decision of the George W. Bush administration to start "withdrawing" Russia from the list of countries receiving economic aid signifies the recognition of the fact that the present Russian leadership has succeeded in reaching the point when such aid is no longer needed.

Sweet Siberia

I stumbled upon profound happiness in Siberia, an infamous land of suffering. So what? Surely there is no need to write a book about it. Weirder things happen to people far more interesting than me. If happiness were the only thing to happen while I was there, I never would have bothered to write down a single word. But happiness wasn't the only thing that happened.

While I found enjoyment in the daily life of my little Siberian town, all around, Russia was enduring three simultaneous but distinct revolutions—one economic, one political, and one cultural. The magnitude of this triple trauma is nearly impossible to appreciate, especially for us first worlders. Imagine an economic depression as severe and sustained as America's Great Depression, a cultural awakening as rude as Commodore Perry's battleships arriving in the backward islands of Japan and a political implosion akin to Napoleonic France after Waterloo. All at once. All in the same country. Yes, Russia is a mess right now. Actually, calling it a mess is an understatement. But, by all accounts, it should be much, much worse. Yes, there is unfathomable hardship. But there is also a surprising amount of defiant joy. This is particularly true in the worst part of Russia: Siberia.

Over the years, many Siberians enchanted me with their steady hope amid hopeless chaos. I knew that these were terrific times; I also knew that these were terrific people. It was a privilege to be among them. It was an honor to be accepted by them. I went to Siberia in search of a place severe enough to satisfy my lust for extremes, and I wasn't disappointed. But I also found a place of sublime subtleties.

Coming Soon

How is Iraq different from the Soviet Union? (i.e. Why not contain Iraq? Can democracy take hold in Iraq as well as, if not better than, it has in Russia)

Is Russia's economy really 14-years of 8% growth away from being as strong as Portugal's economy?

How are post-Soviet Siberia and post-dotcom Silicon Valley alike? (More than you might think.)