MOSCOW — In the spring of this year, social democratic ideas started coming back into fashion in Russia. Former Central Committee apparatchiks — people who had played more than a few roles over the years — recalled the
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MOSCOW — The election on June 23 for the newly created post of president of Belarus signalled dramatic changes in the political life of the former USSR. The ease with which anti-corruption campaigner Aleksandr Lukashenko
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MOSCOW — During this northern spring, a strike wave has rolled across Russia. This has now become a tradition. The problems forcing workers to protest are generally the same: failure to pay wages, declining production and
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MOSCOW — Every day, there are fewer people in Russia. The country has been seized by an unprecedented demographic decline. For the first time since the second world war, the number of deaths substantially exceeds the
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MOSCOW — When Russian citizens elected new people's deputies in the spring of 1990, they believed they were laying the basis for democratic change. And when the deputies elected Yeltsin chairperson of the Supreme Soviet,
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MOSCOW — At the end of 1990, when it was announced that trade in Moscow would be privatised, the city authorities promised that within a few months store shelves would be laden with goods. Queues would disappear, and
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The closer elections come, the more vital it is to have an economic program. Russia is ready for new ideas. Neo-liberal theories no longer evoke the earlier rapture, and people no longer applaud every mention of the
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MOSCOW — Following the Eighth Congress of People's Deputies, it became clear that the political situation in Russia had changed irreversibly. The growing opposition to Yeltsin on the part of the deputies reflected the
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MOSCOW — "The Lithuanians have elected former communists!" The results of the October 24 elections in Lithuania still had not been finalised when this sensational news flashed across the pages of the newspapers. For the
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For almost a year now, the president and the government have been implementing their reforms. They started by promising us that prosperity would come in only seven or eight months. Later they told us that "as we warned
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MOSCOW — How big a bribe do you have to pay if you want some service performed by an employee of the Moscow mayor's office? Ten per cent of the total value of the business involved. This figure
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MOSCOW — More than six months have passed since members and supporters of Russia's leading left groups — the Socialist Party, the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists and a section of the former Communist Party's