Tag - soviet-union

 
 

SOVIET UNION

COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2014
Putin's defense of Hitler pact should worry all
The fact that — in 2014 — Russian President Vladimir Putin is openly prepared to defend the 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact — an archetype of cynical, totalitarian politics — should concern us all.
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 1, 2014
Commemorating wartime Soviet spy Sorge
Seventy years ago on Nov. 7, the Japanese authorities executed Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy who became a member of the Nazi Party and was operating as a journalist in wartime Tokyo.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Oct 4, 2014
Mao Tse-tung seeks to quell internal friction; Shinkansen starts operations; Tokyo Olympics open; America's No. 1 threat?
The XVIII Olympiad, the first to be held in Asia, opened Saturday afternoon amid a profusion of pomp and youthful enthusiasm at the National Stadium before an over-capacity crowd of 80,000 spectators.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2014
How vodka limits hastened the USSR's demise
When the Soviet Union finally disintegrated at the end of 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the new Russian leader, decided not to repeat Mikhail Gorbachev's error of restricting access to vodka. Some say it was Gorbachev's sober way of life — and his attempt to impose it on his countrymen — that makes Russians dislike him in retrospect.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
The silver fox of dictatorship and democracy
The reality of the times was that Eduard Shevardnadze was both a democrat and a despot. His death brings closer to the end the Gorbachev generation of reform communists who presented a stark contrast to the dour Brezhnev-era hard-liners, spurring (mostly inadvertently) the collapse of the Soviet empire and the long transition to democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014
Shevardnadze's lessons for the West
Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and Georgian president who died Monday at 86, was not an effective leader, but if Western leaders had paid closer attention to what he said when he was alive, they would have been better prepared for today's crisis in Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2014
Contradictions over Ukraine
Western criticisms of Russia's move into Ukraine's Crimea region reek of double standards. Much of what is Ukraine today would not have existed if not for the creation of the Soviet Union.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2014
Ukraine's agony may be final Cold War episode
Ukraine's agony is a reverberation of the protracted process of cleaning up after the Soviet Union 'experiment.' So, this is perhaps the final episode of the Cold War.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2014
The return of 1980s rhetoric in Russia
Today's Russia may be a wealthier, more open nation than the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, but President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine is working hard on restoring the stifling moral climate of 30 years ago.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2014
Why is Stalin honored despite killing millions?
It is impossible to imagine a Hitler statue anywhere in Germany, so why is it that statues of Josef Stalin have been restored in towns across Georgia (his birthplace) and that another is to be erected in Moscow as part of a commemoration of all Soviet leaders?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 23, 2013
'Seeking for Utopia'
From the October Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, the promise of Utopia within the USSR was an important ideology in the development of the nation. As such a central theme to society, it naturally also became a focus of Russian art.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?