Windows to Russia

In March 2003, Chechens voted in a referendum that approved a new regional constitution making Chechnya a separatist republic within Russia. Agreeing to the constitution meant abandoning claims for complete independence, and the new powers accorded the republic were little more than cosmetic. During 2003, there were 11 bomb attacks against Russia that were believed […]

Name Ruled1 Born Ivan IV the Terrible 1533–1584 1530 Theodore I 1584–1598 1557 Boris Godunov 1598–1605 c.1551 Theodore II 1605–1605 1589 Demetrius I2 1605–1606 ? Basil IV Shuiski 1606–16103 ? “Time of Troubles” 1610–1613 — Michael Romanov 1613–1645 1596 Alexis I 1645–1676 1629 Theodore III 1676–1682 1656 Ivan V4 1682–16895 1666 Peter I the Great4 […]

In a decision that took Russia and the world by surprise, Boris Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999, and Vladimir Putin became the acting president. In Feb. 2000, after almost five months of fighting, Russian troops captured Grozny. It was a political as well as a military victory for Putin, whose hard-line stance against Chechnya […]

Gorbachev’s promised reforms began to falter, and he soon had a formidable political opponent agitating for even more radical restructuring. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian SSR, began challenging the authority of the federal government and resigned from the Communist Party along with other dissenters in 1990. On Aug. 29, 1991, an attempted coup d’état […]

Seven years ago I met the most wonderful Russian woman in the world! What started as friends on the Internet per e-mails, became a dream come true for this American. I moved to Russia six years ago and have never one time in those years, did I wish that I had never moved to Russia… […]

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION (with the Amendments and Additions of December 30, 2008) We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate in our land, establishing human rights and freedoms, civil peace and accord, preserving the historically established unity of the state, proceeding from the universally recognised principles of […]

After the war, the Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain, and France divided Berlin and Germany into four zones of occupation, which led to immediate antagonism between the Soviet and Western powers, culminating in the Berlin blockade in 1948. The USSR’s tightening control over a cordon of Communist states, running from Poland in the north […]

In March 1998 Yeltsin dismissed his entire government and replaced Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin with fuel and energy minister Sergei Kiriyenko. On Aug. 28, 1998, amid the Russian stock market’s free fall, the Russian government halted trading of the ruble on international currency markets. This financial crisis led to a long-term economic downturn and political […]

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established as a federation on Dec. 30, 1922. The death of Lenin on Jan. 21, 1924, precipitated an intraparty struggle between Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the party, and Trotsky, who favored swifter socialization at home and fomentation of revolution abroad. Trotsky was dismissed as commissar of war […]

Russia Is Finished The unstoppable descent of a once great power into social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance By Jeffrey Tayler During the Cold War years I perceived Russia through a Cold War prism—as a land of vast, frozen twilight realms of steppe and forest where a drama was being acted out that involved players of […]