This Sunday from 3 to 5 PM, I will be at an event sponsored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York City, for the launch of a book of memoirs of immigration by Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The book includes contributions by thirty different immigrants, including a short version of […]
Archive | Russia
Russian Authorities Ban Toy Protest Because Toys “Are Not Even People”
By Ilya Somin on February 18, 2012 1:10 am in Freedom of Speech, Restrictions on Campaign Contrbs. and Expenses, Russia
Officials in the Siberian city of Barnaul recently banned an anti-government protest using toys on the specious justification that “toys, especially imported toys, are not only not citizens of Russia but they are not even people” [HT: Julie Ershadi]: There hadn’t been many – indeed any – rallies like it before in Russia. Last month […]
The 20th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union
In addition to being the last day of the year, today is also the twentieth anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union, when the last Soviet government institutions shut down. Today’s quasi-authoritarian Russia is far from admirable. But, despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s lame and self-serving claims to the contrary, it is still a vast […]
George Orwell on Democracy and Political Ignorance
Bryan Caplan has a interesting post on George Orwell’s portrayal of democracy in his classic work Animal Farm. As Bryan notes, the initially egalitarian and democratic regime established by the animals gets subverted in large part because of political ignorance. Like Bryan, I would be interested to know more about Orwell’s view of real-world democracy. […]
Vladimir Putin and the 22nd Amendment
By Ilya Somin on September 30, 2011 1:14 am in Constitutional Amendments, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Russia
Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he intends to return to the presidency after the 2012 election has been rightly denounced as a deepening of authoritarianism in Russia. Having effectively repressed Russia’s opposition parties and media, Putin is now consolidating his position as a dictator. Barring some sort of sudden collapse of his regime (which is […]
The 50th Anniversary of the Erection of the Berlin Wall
Today is the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall. In November 2009, I wrote a post on the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s destruction. What I said then is also appropriate to today’s less happy anniversary: In several ways, the Wall and its collapse are fitting symbols of communism. They demonstrate several […]
Yelena Bonner, RIP
Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov, and a prominent dissident in her own right has passed away: Yelena Bonner, a rights activist and widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died, her daughter said Sunday. She was 88…. Bonner grew famous through her marriage to Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s leading […]
Debate on Libya and the War Powers Act
By David Kopel on June 9, 2011 12:56 am in Constitutional Law, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Russia
Featuring British NGO representative Leslie Vinjamuri (pro-intervention, sees no legal problem), American peace activist Robert Naiman (anti-intervention, considers the intervention unconstitutional), and me (pro-intervention, but opposed to Obama doing it in violation of the Constitution and the War Powers Act). On the RT (formerly, “Russia Today”) television program “Crosstalk.” 27 minutes.
Tyler Cowen on the Political Attitudes of Russian Jewish Immigrants
In this post, Tyler Cowen asks why Russian Jewish immigrants tend to overwhelmingly support the GOP rather than the Democrats. The reasons are actually no mystery. As I have previously explained here and here, Russian Jews are hawkish on foreign policy and their experience with communism leads them to be suspicious of domestic policies that […]
Why the World is Better Off Without the USSR
There are some great historical events where it’s difficult to tell whether their net effect was positive or not. Contra Brian Leiter, the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t one of them. The fall of the USSR led to the establishment of numerous successful liberal democracies, including Poland, the the Czech Republic, the Baltic States, […]
Hollywood’s First Gulag Movie
The Way Back, Hollywood’s first-ever movie about the Gulag system, recently opened in theaters. Anne Applebaum, author of the excellent history Gulag, has an informative column on the movie in the Washington Post. Applebaum served as a consultant on the film. As she explains, the escape story is at least partly fictional. However, the portrayal […]
Political Attitudes of Russian Jewish Immigrants
By Ilya Somin on January 3, 2011 2:19 pm in Communism, Conservatism, Immigration, Libertarianism, Russia
In a comment on my last post on Russian Jewish immigration, University of North Carolina law professor and blogger Eric Muller writes: Again and again I find myself wondering to what extent it’s true that Jewish refugees/emigres from Soviet totalitarianism (and their offspring) tend to have a libertarian and/or conservative political orientation. Does anyone know […]
The Jackson-Vanik Amendment and Jewish Emigration from the USSR
I agree with most of what co-blogger Sasha Volokh says in his post on Gal Beckerman’s important new book on the political struggle over Jewish emigration from the USSR. For example, it is indeed true (and in retrospect, very interesting) that the campaign united many ideologically disparate groups in the US. When I worked for […]
Did Joseph Stalin Commit Genocide?
By Ilya Somin on November 23, 2010 3:14 am in Communism, Genocide, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Russia
In his excellent recent book Stalin’s Genocides, Stanford historian Norman Naimark argues that Joseph Stalin committed genocide and not “merely” mass murder. Few any longer deny that Stalin’s regime slaughtered millions of innocent people. But the Russian government and some Western writers continue to argue that these murders were not genocidal, and that Stalin therefore […]
A Chinese Parallel to My Soviet-Era Emigration Experience
In response to my memoir about emigrating from the Soviet Union, a Chinese-American reader e-mailed me the following [posted with permission of the author]: Thank you for posting your memoir. I really enjoyed reading it. I can completely identify with your experiences, as my family also had to make its escape from a Communist country, […]