Russia

It is likely that nobody would have taken note of the crash of an Mi-171 helicopter in the Altai region on Jan. 9 if the president's representative to the State Duma, Alexander Kosopkin, had not been among the dead. The passengers who survived the accident were members of the local and federal political elite.

The passengers had been illegally hunting endangered wild sheep, but that did not come to light through a press leak.

As the spring approaches, thousands of people, who have not so far been concerned about the economic crisis, political problems and global depression, are getting seized with horror. Those are senior pupils who will have to take the Single State Examination.

This examination itself is a bad piece of news. But the way Andrei Fursenko, Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, is introducing the exam makes this piece of news still worse. Before conducting the experiment the Ministry keeps inventing new educational rules and instructions which mislead even professionals.

The Russian government has a reason to be quite happy. The oil price has reached this winter $41-42 for a barrel, which is half the price written in Russia’s 2009 budget, but which is better than $25-30 for a barrel that the oil market sought to fix in the autumn. It is not a surprise: oil prices have a tendency to come up in winter since it is cold in the northern hemisphere and the fuel demand is growing.

The protests against the government’s raising import tariffs on second-hand foreign cars, which had been held in Primorye Territory, were suppressed with predictable, but shocking, cruelty.

The developments are consistent with the traditional logic of political escalation. On the one hand, the demonstrators are becoming more radical and politicized, their movement is broadening.

People who were happy enough to vote for United Russia candidates
yesterday, are today shouting "Resign!" with equal enthusiasm.

I would like to confess my grave sin: I have several acquaintances among government officials. Some of them are really high-ranking. This is terrible for an oppositionist, but it is the case.

I have recently visited one of my acquaintances who has been extremely depressed. Of course, the Russian bureaucrats often complain of their living and I heard such words as “You, intellectuals, are lucky! You can speak whatever comes to your minds” many times.

Most public opinion surveys indicate that the Obamamania that swept Western Europe has also seized Russia. However Russians are more afraid of change, and there is nothing in the air to indicate that they see a necessity for sweeping reforms.

Obama’s historic victory breaks the conservative spell at this watershed moment in global affairs, but it would be wrong to pin too many hopes on him.

IF India’s policymakers could secede and create a separate country, it would be a safe bet that the new state would join the ranks of a minuscule minority of the world’s nations, such as Israel, Georgia and the Philippines, which rooted for John McCain in the U