Geography Archives: Russia

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

With Barack Obama, the US could improve its position in the Middle East.  Lebanon’s Hezbollah believes that an attack on Iran is unlikely. Nawaf al-Moussawi is Deputy Secretary and a member of the Politburo of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Al-Moussawi, a Doctor of Philosophy, is Hezbollah’s spokesman for international relations. Mr. al-Moussawi, does the election of […]

Can South America escape the wrath of the economic and financial storms that have their epicenter in the United States?  Since the financial meltdown began in mid-September, the bond markets of most of the region (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela) have been hit, as well as most of their stock markets and a number of currencies.  […]

  Krista Harper.   Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activists and Post-Socialist Ecology in Hungary.   Boulder: Eastern European Monographs, 2006.  160 pp. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-88033-592-8. Wild Capitalism offers a set of ethnographic essays on environmental activism in Hungary from the 1980s through the 1990s, in which Krista Harper “interrogates how the meanings of ‘environment,’ ‘citizenship,’ […]

  James Millward.   Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang.   New York Columbia University Press, 2007.  352 pp.  $41.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3. There are precious few well-written and well-researched books on Central Asia/Eurasia on any topic or period, especially for a non-specialist readership.  This magnificent survey history of an important heartland in the region […]

  William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb, Jr., eds.  No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.   Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59221-575-1. This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of […]

Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab.  On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production.  On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits […]

  Zaa Nkweta, The Real News: Venezuela just announced that it plans to buy Russian tanks as well as Russian armed reconnaissance vehicles.  At the same time, the Russian naval fleet is on its way to Venezuela to conduct joint military exercises. What do you make of this? Forrest Hylton: On the one hand it’s […]

The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future.  In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]

Notwithstanding the renewed public concern about the economy in the wake of the implosion of the global financial architecture, the so-called “war on terror” remains at the forefront of the American presidential election campaign as it heads into its final stretch.  Despite continuing popular opposition to Washington’s blatant empire-building policies both within the US and around the world, both Messrs. Obama and McCain are reiterating their commitment to good, old-fashioned American-style war making.  Indeed, how to take forward the Project for a New American Century will almost certainly be the preeminent issue facing the new occupant of the White House come January.

The sages of History say, Know Thyself — and I do.  I used to be a peace activist, but thanks to the sages of pop-psychology, I see now that I am a codependent. Yet I refuse to be your ordinary, run-of-the-mill codependent, who’s stuck in a crappy relationship with just one needy, abusive individual.  I […]

The rolling stock of the German railroads, due to be peddled off to the highest stock market bidders on October 27th, has been saved, at least temporarily, and is still nationally owned.  That seems to be the one possible bit of good news in the present economic crisis.  All the rest is bad. The railroad […]

No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list — and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo. Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation — whose need for a safe haven […]

Flying into New York Tuesday, I had the same feeling I had when I arrived in Beirut two years ago, at the height of the Israeli bombing of that city — that of entering a war zone. The immigration agent, upon learning I taught political economy, commented, “Well, I guess you folks will now be […]

In the amazing series of elections in South America in the last five years, the most radical results were in Bolivia, with the election of Evo Morales as President.  It is not because Morales stood on the most radical platform.  It was rather that, in this country in which the majority of the population are […]

Bavaria, Germany’s largest state, borders on Austria: both have countless Alpine peaks, lots of men in lederhosen, and many right-wing Roman Catholic traditions.  Both had elections on Sunday.  Before nightfall many an otherwise happy yodeler showed tightly compressed lips and a grim look. In Austria the main parties, the conservative Austrian People’s Party and the […]

The political conflict over the Bush administration’s plan for a bailout of the banks, brought about both by differences with the Democrats and even more intensely with rightwing Republicans, makes it highly unlikely that Congress will be able to pass a bailout plan that can stabilize the financial situation along the lines that Secretary of […]