By John Helmer, Moscow You might say that Russian realism as the style of painting embodying the national spirit, came into its own with “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (lead image), the famous oddity painted by Ilya Repin over three years, 1870-73, following his graduation from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.   […]

by Editor - Thursday, September 14th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow The collapse of Otkritie Bank last month is the largest Russian bank failure since the collapse of National Bank Trust in December 2014.  The Central Bank rescue of Trust made inevitable the much more costly bailout of Otrkitie, announced a fortnight ago on August 29,   charges Ilya Yurov, the former […]

by Editor - Monday, September 11th, 2017
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From Dimitri Lascaris, Baltimore*

by Editor - Wednesday, September 6th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow President Vladimir Putin decided there shouldn’t be a centenary commemoration this year for either the February or October Revolutions of 1917.  Instead, he recommended confining the interpretation of the events to “experts”.  Before that, Putin confided publicly his opinion that the Bolsheviks had caused Russia to lose World War I by […]

by Editor - Tuesday, September 5th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow A Toronto newspaper has revealed that Canada’s leading Russia hater, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, had a deal with George Soros (lead image) to write his biography after she had lost her journalist jobs at the Financial Times and Reuters,  and before she started her run for election to the Canadian parliament. […]

by Editor - Monday, September 4th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

by Editor - Sunday, September 3rd, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow Among the famous cautionary tales of a century and a half ago, the one about Augustus, the boy who refused to eat his parent’s soup for supper, is meant to inculcate obedience, with death as the alternative. This August for Russia readers you can have a third variant that’s both – […]

by Editor - Tuesday, August 1st, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow In a ruling of Russia’s Constitutional Court, issued on July 18, fifteen out of sixteen judges ruled that a state of lawlessness now prevails in the country, in which the constitutional rights of citizens to have courts adjudicate government decisions, with evidence and reasoning, have been abolished.  The court ruling came […]

by Editor - Monday, July 31st, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow President Vladimir Putin doesn’t know how to talk to Americans. He thinks forbearance is the trick. The advisors Putin listens to, like Dmitry Peskov the mouthpiece and Alexei Kudrin the wannabe premier, know even less. Peskov thinks giving large sums of money to a Hollywood hack is the trick. Kudrin thinks […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 30th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow Dixy is the Russian supermarket chain which is proving that the secret to selling groceries across the country at an annual loss of billions of roubles is, er, TOP SECRET.   This makes Dixy unusual because it is the only one of Russia’s top supermarket chains losing money. It is also […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 26th, 2017
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