Moscow covers up nuclear blast at White Sea site

Vol. 83/ No. 32 - September 2, 2019

It took Russian government officials two full days to acknowledge that an explosion that killed seven people Aug. 8, involved workers handling nuclear material at its Nyonoska missile testing site on the White Sea. Moscow has a long record of…


Autoworkers in Russia start ‘work to rule’ against layoffs

Vol. 83/No. 17 - April 29, 2019

The autoworkers union at the Ford Sollers plant in Vsevolozhsk, Russia, in the Leningrad region, launched a “work to rule” job action April 8. Some 900 workers are protesting their coming layoff and are demanding a two-year severance package after…


Lenin: ‘I declare war to death on Great Russian chauvinism’

Vol. 82/No. 48 - December 24, 2018
V.I. Lenin, central leader of 1917 Russian Revolution, at left in front, with delegates at 1920 Second Congress of Communist International. He led 1922-23 fight to defend national rights of oppressed peoples long encased in czardom’s prison house of nations, like toilers in Ukraine.

Below are excerpts from Lenin’s Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-1923. The first is a memo by Vladimir Lenin to the political bureau of the All-Russian Communist Party, formerly the Bolshevik Party. From chapter two of the book — “The…


Lenin discusses Tolstoy’s writing and coming Russian Revolution

Vol. 82/No. 37 - October 8, 2018
Tolstoy, right, in his writings against oppression of the state and official church expressed strength and weakness of peasant movement, wrote Lenin. “The heritage which he has left, belongs to the future. This heritage is accepted and is being worked upon by the Russian proletariat,” Lenin said, to “overthrow capitalism and create a new society.” Above, peasants before 1917 revolution.

Below is the Nov. 29, 1910, article by V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the 1917 Bolshevik proletarian revolution in Russia. It’s entitled “An Appraisal of Leo Tolstoy,” one of the great Russian writers in the dying days of czarist…


Great Russian artists of 19th century and 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

Vol. 82/No. 36 - October 1, 2018
Ilya Repin’s painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (1870-73), discussed in article by Morson. Inset, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), who wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

On July 29 the Weekly Standard ran an article entitled “Pig and People,” by Gary Saul Morson, a professor of Russian art and literature at Northwestern University. The article is available online. Morson develops his view that “Russia’s greatest writers,…


Protests oppose Russian rulers’ moves to raise age for pensions

Vol. 82/No. 29 - August 6, 2018
“We oppose raising the retirement age,” say protest signs in Omsk, Russia. Government proposes to raise age for women from 55 to 63, reflected in signs, and from 60 to 65 for men.

When the Russian government announced plans to raise the retirement age for workers on the eve of the World Cup, it hoped this would be drowned out by the football euphoria. But the proposal provoked widespread anger and protests across…


Washington, Moscow seek new Mideast arrangement

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

Washington seeks to use the July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland, between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to open deeper collaboration with Moscow on future alignments in the Middle East. The U.S. rulers’ goal is to get…


Protests spread against poisoning of air in Russia

Vol. 82/No. 15 - April 16, 2018

“We can’t stop protesting until the landfill is shut down,” Volokolamsk resident Alexander Lvov told the Moscow Times. People in this town of 23,000, about 80 miles from Moscow, have been demanding a halt to the use of the landfill…


US rulers seek ways to meet challenges from Moscow

Vol. 82/No. 14 - April 9, 2018

The U.S. propertied rulers — who head the dominant imperialist power in the world — face growing challenges from both Moscow and Beijing. The Chinese bosses rule the world’s second largest capitalist economy, but their military reach is more limited…


Moscow looks to expand reach, weaken US  rulers’ dominance

Vol. 82/No. 11 - March 19, 2018

Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to sustain the gains the country’s capitalist rulers have made in extending their influence through Moscow’s military intervention in the Mideast and Ukraine without provoking unrest at home. The U.S. rulers want to push back…