Robert Service is Emeritus Professor of Russian History, St Antony’s College Oxford and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution, 1914-1924.
The word ‘oligarch’ returned to the media lexicon at Donald Trump’s inauguration this week when some of the world’s biggest technology entrepreneurs took their seats while US cabinet ministers were asked to sit dutifully behind them. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg felt the need to demonstrate loyalty to Trump. The President did not
President-elect Donald Trump has in recent years talked about ‘buying’ Greenland. Until recently his comments attracted little attention but recently he shocked the world by threatening the use of economic coercion or military force to fulfil his wish. Male gorillas in the forests of west Africa engage in chest-beating to see off their rivals but
Russians are notorious for an aggressiveness at the negotiating table. In 2017 I met a group of diplomats from eastern Europe who highlighted this. They made the point that western commentary understates, if anything, the Russian habit in official talks to insult and intimidate. Apparently Putinite finger-wagging is the least of it and street-language curses
As if the Russian political barometer hasn’t fallen low enough, news comes that it has yet to reach the bottom of the glass. Official symbolism is a reliable indicator of trends, and an announcement by Georgi Filimonov this week marks a new low. Filimonov, recently appointed as governor of Vologda province, plans to erect a
British riots are not a new phenomenon. They were regular occurrences throughout history and usually the spark that lit the tinder was a sense of grievance that the authorities were refusing to deal with. In our century, governments have better technological means to stay attuned to public opinion. But the recent outbreaks of violent protest
Today is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. His Moscow funeral was marked by official communist solemnity, as if a messiah had come and departed. Trams and buses were halted and boats were tied to mooring posts. Factory whistles were sounded at the moment when his corpse, not yet embalmed for the mausoleum that stands
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This week: The Spectator’s cover story looks at how Britain is sobering up, forgoing alcohol in favour of alcohol free alternatives. In his piece, Henry Jeffreys – author of Empire of Booze – attacks the vice of sobriety and argues that the abstinence of young Britons will have a detrimental impact on the drinks industry and British culture.
Loyalty cards in the West are used by supermarket chains to influence our shopping habits. They are fortunately absent from our politics, and we can freely speak our minds about public affairs, history and morality. In Russia it is different. The Russian TASS news agency reported on Wednesday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has
Popes may make claims to infallibility but they certainly make mistakes, and Pope Francis is likely to get a dressing down in heaven from his predecessor-but-one, John Paul II, for what he has now said about Russian imperial greatness. What Kyiv least needs at the moment is a blundering intervention by a well-meaning Argentinian who
Joseph Stalin knew better than Vladimir Putin. After world war two, as the Cold War began, the Soviet dictator took the view that it was more trouble than it was worth to invade Finland again, as he had done with humiliating setbacks in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Too many parents or grandparents of those
It is a full year since Vladimir Putin started his latest war against Ukraine, and only optimists expect that the next anniversary will occur in peacetime. There is little comfort to be taken from the twin possibilities of victory or defeat for the Ukrainian forces. If they win, Russia will remain a potent threat on
At New Year 1992, the USSR ceased to exist and Russia and the other Soviet republics became independent states. Western powers pondered how to deal with the new world order. Their immediate concern was to seek reassurance about the safe control of nuclear weaponry. The Russian authorities managed to sedate these worries, and by the
Vladimir Putin has never been completely clear about his war aims. But he gives clues. He endlessly talks of the brotherhood of Russians and Ukrainians – and in this relationship he always puts Russia first. In Ukraine he wants Russian language schooling to be restored and he of course wishes to annex more Ukrainian territory.
The war against Ukraine – or the ‘special military operation’ as it is compulsorily known in Moscow – has lasted over a fortnight. For weeks Putin maintained a bristling encampment of forces in western Russia, southern Belarus and Crimea. He hoped this would provoke the collapse of the ‘neo-Nazi’ Ukrainian government and its comedian-president. When
Mischief and mayhem work better for Russia than steady cooperation with the western powers. This at least is what the Kremlin leadership decided a decade ago, after Putin had accommodated the American wish for an Uzbekistan base for its Afghan war only to find that President George W. Bush continued to criticise him for the
On 1 November 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB officer and by then a British citizen, met two of his former colleagues, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, in Mayfair and drank a cup of tea with them. What happened next must count as the century’s most gruesome crime so far. The tea taken by Litvinenko was laced
