The Best of the ASEEES 2012 Conference for Russia Watchers

Dear readers, though my Russia blogging has moved to Global Voices, I’m always looking for things worth posting to AGT, which I haven’t abandoned, and will one day undoubtedly return to. This Friday thru Sunday, I’ll be attending the 44th annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in New Orleans. This is [...]

Catherine Fitzpatrick: Hero Blogger

Everyone enjoys reading about himself. This wretched egomania fuels the celebrity phenomenon that is the lifeblood of modern society, and why not! So you can imagine my delight to awake this morning to Catherine Fitzpatrick’s latest four-thousand-word-long masterpiece — an attack on me, my sinister Kremlin sympathies, and the outfit (Global Voices) where I recently signed on as [...]

April & May Updates

Yours truly has been very busy at Global Voices over the past month. Since my last AGT post, I have authored six new pieces at RuNet Echo: 15 May 2012, Russia: Duma Deputy Wants Criminal Liability for Extremist Tweets 11 May 2012, Russia: Yavlinsky Stir Reveals Opposition Rift 7 May 2012, Russia: Violence Plunges Opposition into Debate About [...]

Two Latest Global Voices Posts

Yours truly has published two recent posts to Global Voices’ RuNet Echo project. You can find them here: (10 April 2012) Russia: Astrakhan Becomes Opposition’s New Rallying Cause (13 April 2012) Russia: Ilya Varlamov, Omsk’s Blogger-Mayor?

New Books Network Interview with Stephen White

Another of my New Books Network interviews has gone live. Stephen White‘s Understanding Russian Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011) begins simply enough: “Russia is no longer the Soviet Union.” While this is a well-known fact, the details of Russia’s postcommunist transition — the emergence of a party system and presidential government, as well as the dismantling of the planned economy [...]

New Global Voices Post: Blogger D.Shipilov Convicted of “Insulting a State Official”

I’ve posted a new article to RuNet Echo at Global Voices. Here’s the introduction: Earlier this week, on April 3, 2012, a Kemerovo court convicted blogger Dmitri Shipilov of violating Article 319 of the Criminal Code, “insulting a state official in public.” As a result, he was sentenced to eleven months of community service, with ten percent [...]

AGT is dead. Long live AGT!

Today marks my first day as Global Voices RuNet Echo Project Editor. My inaugural post went live this morning: a report on an online petition that emerged last week advocating expanded controls on foreign-funded Russian NGOs. You can read it here at GV’s site. ‘A Good Treaty’ has been my primary blogging platform for more [...]

Tough Choices Facing the Russian Opposition

The following is a short article co-written with Wesleyan University’s Professor Peter Rutland, who blogs about nationalism at NationalismWatch. It was drafted in early March, immediately after the 2012 Russian presidential election. With Russia’s sixth presidential election having reached its preordained conclusion, what remains unclear is how Moscow’s already seething political opposition will respond to the [...]

Contact the Author

Written by Kevin Rothrock