MOSCOW – There’s nothing more ungainly than newspapers, when their sanctimoniousness is aroused, and they try walking with their feet in their mouths. Call this the Duranty phenomenon. Walter Duranty was the New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer prize, journalism’s highest award in the US, for his reporting on Russia in 1931. Duranty […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 27th, 2003
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Anatoly Chubais is the biggest factotum in Russia, and an oligarch of sorts, in part because he controls United Energy Systems (UES), the electricity utility on which the profit margins of several other oligarchs depends; and also because he was the government official who rigged the privatization schemes that created the oligarchs’ private wealth. Because […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003
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Oleg Deripaska, chief executive of Russian Aluminum (RusAI), Russia’s largest aluminum producer, and head of Basic Element, which holds his investments in other sectors of the Russian economy, has been feeling maligned for a long time now. A two-year-old lawsuit by smelting rival Mikhail Zhivilo in New York accusing Deripaska and his associates of using […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 14th, 2003
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Russian oil producers, pipelines and ports are certain to be badly hit if the United States forces a regime change in Iraq and, consequently, world oil prices fall sharply. And that’s only scratching the surface of the threat to the Russian economy from an American war on Iraq, and all that would follow. Understanding this […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, October 11th, 2003
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If you believe what you are told about Russia in virtually all the world media at this moment, President Vladimir Putin is an isolated savage fighting a last-ditch battle against the forces of advancing civilization, out¬numbered, out¬gunned and doomed. If Putin — and a handful of his advisors — represent the last of the Mohicans, […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, October 11th, 2003
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MOSCOW – In a well-known Russian anecdote, a police investigator is questioning the son-in-law of an elderly lady who has been found dead. “Why did she die?” the policeman asks. “Because she ate poisoned mushrooms,” the son-in-law replies. “So why is her body covered with bruises?” the policeman asks. “Because she was stupid, and didn’t […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 6th, 2003
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MOSCOW – The colors of the Russian flag change under pressure. Czar Alexei Mikhailovich, father of Peter the Great, is believed to have been the author of the first white-blue-and-red tricolor in 1668. An English captain, engaged to command the first naval protection vessel in the Russian fleet, asked the czar to choose a flag, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 26th, 2003
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La Fontaine told a fable of two donkeys who came to misfortune. The first, the vain one, was carrying a load of cash; the other, a load of oats, On a lonely road, they and their masters were suddenly surrounded by thieves who weren’t interested in the oats. After making off with bearer for dead, […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 25th, 2003
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You can always tell when an American politician is well and truly washed up, a has-been. He comes to Russia to meet the tsar so that he can go back to Washington and get the Marine salute at the White House before he divulges the very latest on what the big, bad Russian had to […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 11th, 2003
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When Philip Marlowe, the famous fictional American private eye, read the gossip columns of big-city newspapers, he explained that “I don’t read them often, only when I run out of things I dislike.” If Marlowe were able to read the Moscow papers and savor their meretriciousness, he’d never make it off the front page. Take […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 9th, 2003
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