Posts published in “Extracts”

Shortly before Russia’s 2011–2012 “Snow Revolution,” in which journalists and dissidents rallied against a flawed election process (“flawed” sounds like an understatement to be honest), Thomas Campbell began to follow the rise of a vigorous social movement germinating in Russia’s blogosphere. By translating activists’ work from Russian to English, Campbell hopes to lift the curtain on Putin’s Russia and expose the perennial nomenklatura. I learned about Campbell’s blog at a talk he gave last week at NYU’s Jordan Center.

“What have I learned from 8 years of blogging in St. Petersburg?” Campbell asked. “Most of my pieces fall under the purview of the Russian ‘history wars’ of the last decade. When I first started, there was a greater degree of freedom for activists and journalists. Now, voices are being suppressed in favor of an official, state narrative flowing from the pens and keyboards of the Kremlin spin doctors and other ‘authority figures.’”