- 17:28 09/12/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov
December 8th marked 20 years since Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich met to pull the plug on the Soviet Union.
- 18:46 08/12/2011 Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov
Twenty years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Soviet Union's Slavic republics – Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia – signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union.
- 00:58 02/12/2011 RIA Novosti economic commentator Vlad Grinkevich
Russia has been carrying out economic reforms for 20 years now, which is enough time to sum up the results. Regrettably, they are not very optimistic.
- 17:23 04/10/2011 Dan Peleschuk, Russia Profile
An interesting fact about Mikhail Gorbachev is that the handful of times the typically cool-headed general secretary raised his voice, it was over the “nationality question” in the Soviet Union. With his declaration of glasnost in the mid-1980s, Gorbachev had thrown open the floodgates that had long suppressed the expression of national identity, and unwittingly paved the way for the nationalist mobilization that helped topple the regime.
- 18:20 03/10/2011 Anna Arutiunova, Russia Profile
On June 18, 2011, the inhabitants of the Bulgarian capital Sofia woke up to find the monument to Soviet Army soldiers in the city center vandalized. The bronze flag at the center of the composition was spray-painted the colors of the American flag, while the figures of the Russian soldiers were turned into pop culture heroes, such as Superman, Ronald McDonald and Santa Claus.
- 17:55 02/10/2011 Andrei Zolotov Jr., Russia Profile
In May 2010, a group of top officials in charge of the Moscow Kremlin, Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways and the influential St. Andrew’s Foundation convened to announce sensational news: the historical icons on the Kremlin’s main towers facing the Red Square, long believed to have been destroyed by the Bolsheviks, were discovered behind a layer of plaster and would be restored to their former glory.
- 14:59 01/10/2011 Dmitry Babich, Russia Profile
There are whole spheres of Russian cultural life that undergo a period of decline, but the Soviet period is a pleasant exception. The thousands of books, tens of thousands of newspaper stories and millions of comments on the Internet are a reflection of the passions that still rage around the 74 years of Soviet history.
- 14:44 30/09/2011 Dan Peleschuk, Russia Profile
What did it mean to be “Soviet?” Did it describe a disciplined work ethic, hope for a bright socialist future and an unshakable faith in the state; or did it represent careless passivity and a certain fealty to the ruling regime? Was it idealized, or was it a product of real experience?
- 14:15 29/09/2011 Alexander Daniel, Special to Russia Profile
Today, anybody who openly clashed with the Soviet government is indiscriminately labeled a dissident: the avant-garde, hipsters, human rights advocates, religious activists of all kinds (if their activity led to a conflict with the authorities), Jews seeking emigration permits, nationalists from the Soviet Union’s republics and so on.
- 14:16 28/09/2011 Andrew Roth, Russia Profile
Since its inception in 2005, Nashi, Russia’s anti-fascist, pro-Vladimir Putin youth group, has seen a meteoric rise and a quiet fall. The harshest criticism of the group has likened it to both the Hitler Youth and the Soviet Komsomol.
- 15:02 27/09/2011 Tai Adelaja, Russia Profile
It seems plausible to presume, with the benefit of hindsight, that the economic inertia that accumulated during 70 years of communist rule over the Soviet Union was positive proof of the empire’s inevitable demise.
- 15:00 26/09/2011 Dmitry Babich, Russia Profile
Alexander Podrabinek and Mikhail Konovalenko are both worthy of respect—in their own ways. But they are tied in a bitter conflict, which reflects almost all of the controversies of the Soviet Union’s 73-year-long history.
- 16:25 25/09/2011 Andrew Roth, Russia Profile
Before 1917, when the worker became king and the city—his domain, over 80 percent of the Russian population did not live in cities. At the time of the Soviet Union’s fall roughly 70 years later, that ratio had been reversed, with the vast majority having at some point lived in a cramped communal apartment (kommunalka.)
- 15:11 24/09/2011 Alexey Beglov, Special to Russia Profile
For the Russian Orthodox Church, the post-Soviet period began in October of 1990, even before the Soviet Union’s official collapse, when the government adopted a new Soviet law on the freedom of conscience. This law canceled the registration of clergymen with the authorities and turned the Council for Religious Affairs into a consultative, rather than monitoring body.
- 16:40 23/09/2011 Rosemary Griffin, Russia Profile
First names inspired by the October Revolution and its leaders appeared as a way of demonstrating commitment to the cause in the early years of the Soviet Union. Often acronyms of the initials of Soviet luminaries, revolutionary events or achievements, from the late 1910s onward children of the Soviet Union wore their parents’ political beliefs, aspirations or fears on their birth certificates.
- 19:16 22/09/2011 Pavel Koshkin, Russia Profile
Contrary to popular belief, the tight grip that 70 years of Soviet indoctrination exerted on the popular psyche was not limited to the older generations of Soviet citizens. Many of today’s young people—who were not even born when the Soviet Union still existed—are showing symptoms of grief and pining for the “good old days.”
- 13:35 09/09/2011 Interview with Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva
During its independent existence Kyrgyzstan has sustained severe economic downturns, regional upheavals, two revolutions and high ethnic tensions. Moscow News interviewed Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva about the past and future under its joint project with RIA Novosti and the magazine Russia in Global Affairs “Twenty Years without the Soviet Union.”
- 20:17 06/09/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Babich
Twenty years ago, on September 6, 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
- 19:09 06/09/2011 Interview with Stepan Grigoryan
A joint session of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional and the Shaumyan district councils took place in the Karabakh capital of Stepanakert twenty years ago – on September 2, 1991.
- 17:29 25/08/2011 Anatoly Oryol, Oleg Gritsayenko
August 24, 2011 marks two decades since Ukraine's parliament adopted the Declaration of Independence. But instead of looking back on Ukraine's post-Soviet history, let's look ahead to see what lies in store for the country.
- 01:24 23/08/2011 Armando Peres, head of RIA Novosti's Spanish language desk
In August 1991, I was working as a correspondent with a Spanish newspaper, El Periódico de Catalunya. On the morning of August 19, there was a buzz going around among all the reporters, who were puzzling over the strange TASS statement about the “emergency regime” that had been imposed in the Soviet Union. All we could gather from it was that Gorbachev was too ill to run the country.
- 10:28 22/08/2011 Tatyana Malkina, The Moscow News
Veteran journalist Tatyana Malkina looks back at the 1991 coup, and wonders if people will ever remember her for anything but a question she posed to one of its organizers.
- 16:36 20/08/2011 Christopher Boian, RIA Novosti’s Director of Foreign Language News
I remember that summer very well. I was working as a correspondent here in Moscow. There was a lot of tension already in the political scene before the putsch happened. And Gorbachev was trying to negotiate the new Union treaty and new arrangements for holding the Soviet Union together.
- 23:47 19/08/2011 RIA Novosti economic commentator Vlad Grinkevich
Twenty years ago, the self-proclaimed State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) attempted to seize power in the Soviet Union.
- 22:26 19/08/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Babich
On the 20th anniversary of the coup attempt by the self-proclaimed State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), we are left to wonder, could the attempt have succeeded?
- 14:53 19/08/2011
Twenty years ago, on August 19-22, 1991, an attempted coup d’etat occurred in the Soviet Union to overthrow President Mikhail Gorbachev and change the course of his political policies.
- 14:50 19/08/2011
On August 19, 1991, the GKChP, an emergency committee of hard-line communists, attempted a coup d’état to overthrow then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and halt his reform plans.
- 12:59 19/08/2011 MOSCOW, August 19 (RIA Novosti)
Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house, has said the abortive coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 was doomed.
- 11:46 19/08/2011 MOSCOW, August 19 (RIA Novosti)
The United States had a real fear that the USSR could collapse into civil war along national lines in a Yugoslavia-style conflict, Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor under President George H. W. Bush, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
- 11:32 19/08/2011 Interview with Lt. General Brent Scowcroft
Lt. General Brent Scowcroft served as National Security Advisor under President George H. W. Bush when the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev occurred on August 19, 1991. He was in the White House team when all dramatic changes were happening in Eastern Europe and in the USSR, including the rapid growth of nationalism in the Soviet republics, the movement for independence from the USSR, and, finally, the breakup of the Soviet Union after the coup.
- 09:12 19/08/2011
In the early hours of August 19, 1991, senior Soviet officials who disagreed with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the new version of the Union Treaty, set up the State Committee for State of Emergency.
- 18:29 17/08/2011 MOSCOW, August 17 (RIA Novosti)
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the hard-line coup said that he knew about the coup being prepared but he thought it was more important to avoid bloodshed and especially a civil war.
- 16:05 17/08/2011 Alexander Rahr*
There were three main stages, in my view, in the process that resulted in the end of the communist Soviet Union in ‘91. The first one was the non-signing of the treaty to create a new confederation in June 1991 – the Novo-Ogaryovo process. This practically represented the end of the Soviet Union, because afterwards, the individual republics did not even want to loosely maintain any kind of common structure with Moscow.
- 12:28 16/06/2011 Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs
Twenty years ago, on June 12, 1991 Russia elected its first president, Boris Yeltsin, with a convincing majority. This fact predetermined the events of the following months and became the final prerequisite for the Soviet Union's imminent disintegration.
- 12:42 15/06/2011 By RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
The June 1991 Russian presidential election was, arguably, the straw that broke the Soviet Union's back, even if its organizers had no such intention.
- 00:06 21/05/2011
For a large number of people, the Soviet Union’s collapse was a tragedy because they lost a familiar life and apparent prosperity and had to abruptly change their lifestyles.
- 18:41 20/05/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
On May 20, 1991, the USSR Supreme Soviet (parliament) approved the law on the entry to and exit from the Soviet Union, which amounted to raising the Iron Curtain.
- 22:14 26/04/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
Twenty years ago, on April 24, 1991, a law was enacted in Russia mandating that the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) be elected by a general, direct, free, fair and secret vote, only to sow the seeds of the great political rivalry between two overlapping presidents: Boris Yeltsin, the president of the RSFSR, and Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the USSR.
- 15:16 11/04/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
Twenty years ago, on April 9, 1991, after two centuries, Georgia officially emerged from Moscow's "canopy of friendly bayonets." On this day, the Georgian Supreme Soviet, the highest body of power at the time, passed a resolution declaring Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union following a national referendum in which 98% of voters chose independence.
- 11:44 24/03/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
The Soviet Union’s first, and last, referendum was held in the USSR on March 17, 1991 at the initiative of its first, and last, president – Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet people were asked whether or not they want to keep the USSR, at least that’s how it seemed at first glance.
- 09:52 18/03/2011 RIA Novosti commentator Fyodor Lukyanov
Twenty years ago, on March 17, 1991, the majority of Soviet citizens (76.4%) voted for the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
- 18:00 16/03/2011
More than half of Ukrainian residents regret the break-up of the Soviet Union, an expert from the Research & Branding Group said on Wednesday, citing poll results.
- 12:33 13/03/2011
The Referendum on preserving the Soviet Union, the only popular vote in the 70-year history of the USSR, was held on March 17, 1991.
- 18:36 15/02/2011 Fyodor Lukyanov for RIA Novosti
The newly reopened issue of the Russian-Japanese territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands stems primarily from the two countries’ current domestic problems; but if we look at it through the prism of global processes triggered two decades ago by a geopolitical revolution in Europe and the collapse of the USSR, this conflict may also tell us something about the world at large.
- 17:34 10/02/2011 Ivan Savelyev for RIA Novosti
In the USSR, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia always stood apart. The Baltic republics boasted a higher standard of living than other parts of the country, and produced goods that set the standard for quality for the entire nation.
- 19:32 07/02/2011 RIA Novosti interview with Vladimir Lebedev
Boris Yeltsin, chairman of the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Soviet, flew to Tallinn immediately after the attempt to restore Soviet rule by force in Lithuania on January 13, 1991.
- 20:39 03/02/2011 RIA Novosti interview with Mustafa Dzhemilev
Mustafa Dzhemilev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Supreme Rada, tells RIA Novosti correspondent Dmitry Zhmutsky why Crimean Tatars did not take part in the referendum and why they don’t support Crimean autonomy in its present form.
- 20:24 03/02/2011 RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky
The year 1991 was a turning point for Russia. In its significance, it can only be compared to 1917, when the October Revolution led to the overthrow of the tsar.
- 11:10 02/02/2011 Reference note
The final Soviet monetary reform began on January 22, 1991. It was named the Pavlov Reform after its architect, Minister of Finance Valentin Pavlov, who also became the last prime minister of the Soviet Union.
- 19:58 30/01/2011
For twenty years Russians have adapted,more than once, to new money.
- 18:27 21/01/2011 Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, for RIA Novosti
The events that took place in the Baltics in January 1991 turned the tide on the Soviet Union's history.
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to work at a cooperative(s) in the Great Northwest American Continent! What will happen to the price of Labour?Thru the roof!