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Recent content by Boris Kagarlitsky

The World's Largest Pyramid Scheme

The United States managed to avert a default, and that is good news. But the partisan battle in Congress sent the stock market plunging, and the decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit rating has made matters far worse.

Privatization Follies

Who will benefit from a second wave of privatisation in Russia?

Europe's Nationalists waiting in the dark

As Brussels bureaucrats and established political parties struggle to answer the current crisis caused by a faulty economic structure, right-wing nationalist parties have increasingly come to the fore in Europe, with Finland's recent election the last contribution to a worrying trend.

Link between capitalism and hunger

Speculation on food commodities causes hunger, despite state regulations; thirty years of liberalization of the food market has resulted in a food crisis on a scale higher than ever.

Radical Retirees

Russia's youth are much less radical or politically active than Russia's retirees - putting up little resistance as officials gradually encroach upon their rights and entitlements.

Video: Emerging Powers: Allies or Rivals?

The economic elites are turning to a neoliberal Keynesianism to save the crisis of capitalism, which is doomed to fail because it does not address its root causes.

Global Crisis: A Russian Perspective

The world systems analysis is failing to explain and respond to the current crisis in global capitalism.

The Return of Fascism

The logic of Russian fascists has always stood in sharp contrast to the logic and traditions of the development of the nation.

Prokhorov’s Shock Modernization

The public outrage that was caused by the leakage of a controversial amendment to the Labor Code in Russia might backfire beyond what the unions anticipated.

Norma Rae Would Be Proud

While intellectuals debate whether Russia has a civil society, union leaders created an organization independent of government control with thousands of members.

Controlling People Through Language

Market reforms have given rise to new revisions of the language, and all personal activities are now expressed in terms of buying and selling.

A Burning Wake-Up Call

Russian authorities and much of the Russian public have pretended up to now that there were no costs to privatisation of forests and that there was no climate crisis. We have to hope this year's fires and heatwave causes a change in policy.

Sad Spectacle in Istanbul

If left-wing ideas have become popular again and social movements in Eastern Europe have strengthened, why is the European Social Forum in decline?

Creating a Nation of Poor, Sick and Ignorant

A new bill has been passed in Russia that will extensively roll back Government funding of education, the arts and social services - by introducing per capita financing - that will punish smaller towns and downgrade quality in the larger ones.

Lenin’s Loss Is Stalin’s Gain

The dumbing-down of the masses is the primary achievement of the last two decades of so-called "reform” in Russia. Society has changed radically, and the mechanism by which cultural identity is formed has been seriously undermined, if not completely destroyed.

A perfect social storm

The world is changing before our eyes, but the underlying causes are poorly understood. The sudden recent collapse of the political regime in Kyrgyzstan is a case in point.

Silicon Valley’s Time Is Over

The Russian government's modernization plans are outdated and mis-directed.

The Class War on Leninsky Prospekt

Protests sparked by last month’s fatal car accident in Moscow reveal the depth and scale of the anti-corporate mood in today’s Russia.

Russia's failure in the Olympic games

The authorities are looking for scapegoats for failure of the Russian team at the Olympics, but what is going on in sports is only an example of what is going on in other spheres of life - neoliberalism yields the same results no matter where it is applied.

Putin and Europe on the same crisis page

The
current wave of strikes across Europe are only a prelude to what will
come, as the ruling elite are not prepared to change their anti-crisis
policies that have merely supported the corporations that caused the
crisis.