Russia’s Local Elections: Politics in Spite of Putin

Soviet leaders had a poor record of keeping their promises. Nikita Khrushchev’s pronouncement that Communism would be fully implemented by 1980, or Mikhail Gorbachev’s pledge to give every family its own apartment by 2000, only provided more fodder for political jokes. Dmitri Medvedev’s assertion, at a meeting with Western Kremlinologists in September 2009, that direct […]

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As China Slows, Australia Feels The Pain

The last time Australia was mired in recession, Boris Yeltsin had yet to stand on a tank in Moscow, and the Clinton era hadn’t begun. In 1991, Australian trade with China was a modest A$3.6 billion (about the same in U.S. dollars). In the preceding decade unemployment had averaged 7.8 percent, as Australia struggled to develop tourism […]

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