Nostalgia for the Soviet simplification of the world, even shared by the opposition, is pervasive while ‘making America great again’ resonates in the Caucasus or Siberia as much as the infantilized world of Massachusetts.
Once again this year, despite bans and restrictions, the celebration of the “Restitution of Names” of Soviet-era victims was held in more than 100 cities in Russia and abroad, gathering at different places and times than usual to evade police controls. Meanwhile, Moscow authorities report that plans are afoot to remove the Lubyanka Stone for “renovation work” on the square.
A new crackdown by the Parliamentary Commission for Migration Policy. They are targeting bodies that issue compulsory certificates of knowledge of the Russian language and history and the Internet sites that help obtain illegal documents. Unauthorised stay on Russian territory also becomes an aggravating circumstance for any violation of a rule.
In 1846 Nicholas I went privately to Rome to see Pope Gregory XVI to beg him not to give in to the liberal and republican temptations that were also taking hold in the Holy City. And the desire to ‘defend the values’ of Christian Europe led him to the Crimean War. Today, on the contrary, Pope Francis with the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ mission of Card. Zuppi to Moscow sees the world's crisis in the light of the Gospel.
According to ex-President of Dagestan Abdulatipov, today's nationalisms in the former Soviet Caucasus seem to nullify traditions, harking back to medieval origins of feudal disintegration, without taking into account the ‘historical, cultural and human experience of inter-ethnic and inter-religious integration’.
Russian fossil fuel producers are investing in new technologies in the conviction that at least until 2050 extractive materials will remain crucial in the world economy. Renewable energies will be used more and more, but in parallel with the oil share, as cars become increasingly popular in Africa and Latin America.
