German President Joachim Gauck may be boycotting the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in order to protest Russia’s human rights abuses: German President Joachim Gauck will not represent his country at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, his office says. The announcement makes Gauck, a former pastor, the first major political figure to boycott the […]
Archive | Russia
Thanksgiving for Purported Pirates in Russia and the U.S.
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 28, 2013 8:00 am in Criminal Law, Federal Jurisdiction, International Law, National Security, Russia
It is a happy Thanksgiving for defendants in two very different piracy cases – the trial of Ali, a Somali education official arrested while attending an education conference in the U.S., and the crew of Greenpeace’s ship Arctic Sunrise, arrested by Russia last month while minding Russia’s business on an oil rig. I’ve written about […]
What Russia’s Piracy Charges Against Greenpeace Mean for International Law
Amazingly, Russia has brought criminal piracy charges against the crew of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which it had arrested on the high seas. The piracy charges make a mockery of international law, for reasons I’ve discussed. Moreover, such clearly abusive and politicized piracy charges are quite unprecedented in modern history, as far as I […]
Greenpeace & Russia – an International Pussy Riot
I blogged earlier about Russia’s illegal seizure of a Greenpeace vessel in international waters, and its laughable characterization of their acts as maritime piracy. The ship Arctic Sunrise had been boarded after an attempt to board or come alongside a Russian oil rig for some kind of non-violent protest. Subsequently, Vladimir Putin apparently poured cold […]
Russia’s Piracy Charges Against Greenpeace Groundless and Illegal
Russia has seized a Dutch-flagged Greenpeace vessel in international waters, and plans to charge the crew with piracy. The environmentalists had attempted to unfurl a protest banner on a Russian Arctic oil platform. Russian commandos raided the Arctic Dawn and towed it to port. The unusual piracy charges may well be inspired by a Ninth […]
Should We Boycott the Sochi Olympics?
Gay rights advocates such as actor Harvey Fierstein are calling for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, over Russia’s highly repressive new law banning “homosexual propaganda,” any speech that equates the social status same-sex relationships with heterosexual ones. Others argue that the West should not boycott the Olympics, but should instead […]
Communism, The Americans, and the Nature of Evil
The Americans, FX’s new TV series about KGB sleeper agents living in America in the early 1980s, has drawn mostly rave reviews. I have a somewhat mixed reaction. On the positive side, I thought that Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are extremely effective in the lead roles of Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, KGB agents who […]
Immigration Stories Event in Lexington, MA
For readers who may be interested, my father, Yefim Somin, will be speaking on his experience of immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA on February 28 at 7 PM. His talk will be part of a panel on the experiences of immigrants who have settled […]
Putin Signs Law Banning Adoption of Russian Orphans by Americans
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently signed a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans: President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated […]
“Failure: Why We Need It”
That was the provocative title of a seminar earlier this month organized by the Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy’s free market think tank. The event was the IBL’s 9th annual Mises Seminar. As is common at multinational seminars in Europe, the event and the papers were in English, which is today’s lingua franca among well-educated Europeans. My favorite […]
How Are Things in Russia?
Occasionally, people ask me how things are in Russia, and I say that I haven’t been following Russian events in any detail. Still, I do have an opinion, albeit uninformed, and it echoes a poem by Bulat Okudzhava, my favorite Russian singer. As I mentioned eight years ago, the poem was written in 1989 — […]
The Gulag Museum and Russia’s Historical Memory of Communism
During my recent visit to Russia, I visited the Gulag Museum in Moscow, one of the few recent Russian efforts to accurately portray the horrible atrocities of communism. The mass murders and other crimes of communist regimes have often been neglected in both Russia and the West. In recent years, that neglect has deepened in […]
Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation
By David Kopel on June 12, 2012 4:05 pm in Guns, International Human Rights Law, Non-Firearms Arms, Registration, Right to carry, Russia, Uncategorized
For those of who have been waiting for an English translation of Russia’s arms statutes, your wait is over. Independence Institute intern Margot van Loon is the author of the new Issue Paper, Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation. Here is a synopsis: No permission or registration is needed to purchase and carry chemical defense […]
The New York Times on the Politics of Russian Immigrants
The New York Times has an interesting article on the political attitudes of New York City’s Russian immigrant community. Unlike most New Yorkers and especially most New York Jews (the Russian immigrant community is overwhelmingly Jewish), they tend to support the GOP over the Democrats: To many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, the cornucopia in the […]
HIAS Book of Immigration Memoirs by Soviet Jewish immigrants Now Available Online
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has just published a book of thirty immigration memoirs by Soviet Jewish immigrants, which is available for sale here. My father, Yefim Somin, and I are among the contributors. There are also several well-known contributors such as novelist Gary Shteyngart and artist Marc Klionsky. I blogged about my contribution here.