The Moscow Times

Perhaps the central message of the collapse of Soviet communism can be summed up as follows: If it is to survive and flourish on the world stage, Russia needs to develop a different kind of realpolitik.

What is национальность? Dictionaries tell you that it's ethnicity: принадлежность человека к этнической общности, отличающейся особенностями языка, культуры, психологии, традиций, обычаев, образа жизни (a person's identification with an ethnic group that is distinguished by a distinctive language, culture, psychology, traditions, customs and way of life).

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One of Russia's largest fraud schemes over the past 10 years has affected 70,000 homebuyers who were cheated out of their investments after the developer vanished or declared bankruptcy.

The history of successive authoritarian regimes in Russia reveals a recurring pattern: They do not die from external blows or domestic insurgencies.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would have a difficult time complying with some of the demands put forward by protesters in recent rallies — such as "Putin resign!" — but implementing others would actually be to his benefit.

On Jan. 23, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Russia's nationalities and migration policy

Russia and Indonesia have a combined population of 377 million people, share 5.5 percent of the world's gross domestic product, possess huge potential in natural resources and both are on the path toward democracy and free market capitalism.

The media first leaked the story of the death of 15-year-old Nikita Leontyev from St. Petersburg a day after it happened on Jan. 21.

Some members of the Moscow intelligentsia have been working overtime to come up with rather outlandish material for the media.

Ambassador Michael McFaul's first steps on arrival in Moscow were marked by a scandal in the State Duma, the media and elsewhere.

In mid-December, while trying to understand what was happening in Russia, I checked Twitter and found a tweet that somehow signified everything.

I was inundated with congratulations from friends, colleagues and journalists following the Supreme Court ruling a week ago in favor of the Republican Party of Russia, which I headed until it was liquidated five years ago.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's leading self-proclaimed patriot and its former envoy to NATO, was appointed last month as deputy prime minister in charge of overseeing the defense industry. Although his appointment came as a surprise to most observers, there had been several signs that this was coming.

In 2006, an exposé about British "spy stones" in a film by pro-Kremlin television journalist Arkady Mamontov set off a media storm. The story was so advantageous for the Kremlin that many commentators suspected that the device was not real and that the whole story was a fabrication created to justify a government attack on nongovernmental organizations that were active in Russia.