Russia Blog Roundup – 10 June

Every week I think, oh, it’s been a quiet week, there won’t be all that much to include in the weekly blog roundup.   I’ll rattle through this in 10 minutes, and go out for a drink.

Then you lot all keep writing lots of interesting posts, like these, and my drinking plans go out the window…

• Windows to Russia is two years old!  Happy Birthday.
• This week, it was also Pushkin’s Birthday.  Or, at least, it would have been, had he lived to the ripe old age of 210.  Josefina has all you need to know to brag to your Russian friends about your knowledge of Russian literature.
• Also from Josefina – ??????, ??????, ??????!
• The Other Russia reports on how the Russian Police are using modern technology to create blacklists of the opposition.  It looks like someone has been learning from Britain, the world’s most watched over society.
• Latvia’s Livonian minority struggles to keep its language and culture alive.
• Izo translates part of an intriguing, if slightly cryptic, interview with Yuri Milner, who has just bought a 2% stake in Facebook for around $200 million.
• Mikhail Lennikov is a former KGB spy who has “taken refuge inside a church in Vancouver in a desperate move to avoid deportation” back to Russia.  Robert Amsterdam has the story.
• Tim goes camping in Sakhalin.  Why did he need a holiday?  He’s been Doing Business in Russia.  Twice. Or, at least, trying.
• Everyone knows that WW2 started because Poland did not want to meet some really quite reasonable German demands.  Or, at least, that’s what everyone in the Russian Ministry of Defence knows.  Check out The Russian Front for the article that kicked off the storm.
• Katie explains Why Women Love Medvedev.
• Pravda on the Potomac’s coverage of Russia moves from “bland” to “anemic”.
• Is a “network of purportedly independent political parties, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and the like” being created to push the Kremlin’s line?
• Russia scraps the sale of MiG-31s to Syria in exchange for some Israeli UAVs.
• Putin shows one of his Oligarchs just who is boss: “Why has your factory been so neglected?” he demanded, as Mr Deripaska hung his head in apparent shame. “They’ve turned it into a rubbish dump.Why was everyone running around like cockroaches before my arrival? Why was no one capable of taking decisions?”
• The Motherland Calls is a massive statue that “towers seventeen stories above the Russian city of Volgograd”. Unfortunately, it’s about to fall down.
• Two people are nice to the Expatresse.  In one day.  And they’re Russian.
• Two Russian women reached the French Open tennis final at the weekend.  Only La Russophobe could describe it as “an amazing, unprecedented humilation” (sic) for Russian women.
• And finally, via Russia! magazine’s blog, a classic Soviet arcade game for you to play – Morskoi Boi.   Please feel free to boast about your high scores in the comments…