Weekly Russia Blog Roundup 25 October 2010

Another cracking week of posts from around the Russia blogs for you, plus a LEGO video.  What more can you ask?

• Gregory Asmolov at Global Voices wonders what the future is for crowdsourcing during Russian disasters.  (Gregory was one of the founders of the Help Map project that helped to fight this summer’s fires, so he has a unique insight.)
• Fascinating analysis of a potential China-Russia conflict by Anatoly at Sublime Oblivion.  Short version: It won’t happen, but if it does China’s overwhelming conventional superiority means the conflict will go nuclear quickly.  Russia is better placed to survive the fallout and any Chinese victory will be a Pyrrhic one.  Make sure to check out the debate in the comments section.
• Related, you’ll be pleased to hear that Russia and China have agreed to exchange launch notifications.  Unless, of course, it’s during an actual war.
• Moscow’s Virtual Mayoral election was won by Aleksei Naval’nyi.
• The Alexander Railway Bridge over the Volga is almost 1.5m long.  Not bad for a 130 year old bridge, writes Dmitry and De Rebus Antiquis Et Novis.
• Vadim Nitkin wonders if the bulldozers will come back to the Khimki Forest.  If they don’t, he says, it will be “huge advertisement for a new, savvy activism that’s not afraid to get its hands dirty by strategically bargaining with the elites, rather than trying to quixotically bring them down”.
• One I missed from last week’s roundup – does registration of putin2012.ru and medvedev2012.ru domain names indicate who will run for President in 2012?
• The Chechen Parliament attack has more to do with rivalry between Chechen rebel movements than a serious attempt to destabilize the current regime’s relations with Moscow, says In Moscow’s Shadows.
• Patrick’s Weekly Russian Federation Sitrep.

And finally, via Sean and lots and lots of people on Facebook and Twitter, the animated LEGO History of the USSR for Children.

All you need is love.