Talk about Denunciations in Stalin’s Time and Now Effort by Kremlin to Shift Responsibility from Itself to the Population, Krivenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 3 – Mass denunciations in Stalin’s time and more recently are “a myth” disseminated by the authorities to shift responsibility from themselves and onto the population, according to Sergey Krivenko, a human rights activist who has specialized on the Great Terror.

            The numbers of denunciations Moscow claimed then and now were exaggerations, he says; and efforts by Stalin-era officials to get real numbers led them to report that there were only a handful compared to the number that the Stalinist media reported. Something similar is true now (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/27/kak-rabotal-sovetskij-terror).

            Some Russians did and do denounce people either to get preferment from those above them or to get apartments freed up so that they could move in, Krivenko acknowledges; but the real number of denunciations then and now are far smaller than the authorities claim or report in stories about this phenomenon.

            It is long past time to recognize that the numbers circulating are made up and intended to suggest that the Russian people were behind repressive moves by the state, thereby legitimating what the state wanted to do and was prepared to release false numbers in the pursuit of its own goals. 

Past Territorial Concessions to Moscow in North ‘Not Set in Stone,’ Estonian Legal Specialist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – There are seven regions in the Baltic and Scandinavian regions where Russia has acquired territory or special rights on the basis of Cold War era agreements, Denis Polman points out, but because circumstances have changed, everyone needs to recognize that these earlier concessions are “not set in stone.”

            The seven are, the Estonian legal specialist says, Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad), Karelia, Porkkala, Hanko, the islands of the Gulf of Finland, Finland’s Aland Islands, and Norway’s Spitzbergen (Svalbard) (arvamus.postimees.ee/8575084/denis-polman-kellele-kuuluvad-konigsberg-ja-karjala  reposted at mariuver.eu/2026/11/02/komu-prinadlezhat-koningsberg-i-karelija/).

            These seven cases, Polman writes, share in the fact that they were the subjects of agreements with Moscow “when the balance of interests today is completely different from what it was in the middle of the 20^th century.” Indeed, two of the territories, Hanko and Porkkala, have already been returned to their rightful owners.

            The others remain open, he continues. The Western powers transferred Koenisberg to Moscow’s control but only until a final peace treaty for World War II would be concluded, something that has not yet happened. Karelia was transferred to Russian control by a Finnish minister who was under Moscow’s influence, something that vitiates their legitimacy.

            And both Spitzbergen and the Aland Islands gave Russia special rights but only so long as Russia observed its obligations, something it has not done. Consequently, Polman says, all these places where Russia has control or exercises special rights need to be reexamined and possibly reversed by law rather than my any military action.

Surviving Soviet Mosaics Send Messages Fundamentally at Odds with Putinism, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – Many of the mosaics which were installed at the end of Soviet times but continue to be maintained contain messages very much at odds with the ideology of Putinism, promoting as they do peace, internationalism, and the future rather than war, Russian nationalism, and the past, Vadim Shtepa says.

            The editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says that in fact, many of the messages from the past which survive in these murals are so at odds with Putinism that their authors if they appeared now would be subject to criminal sanctions of one kind or another (arvamus.delfi.ee/artikkel/120621668/vadim-stepa-ei-sojale-maailmale-rahu-tanaseni-pusivad-noukogude-loosungid-arritavad-kremlit-taiega reposted at region.expert/mosaic/).

            Indeed, Shtepa continues, “inside Russia, it is absolutely impossible to create new mosaics on the topics of world peace, friendship of the peoples and a future in space now.” That has had an unanticipated result: many advocates of these things are now trying to restore the Soviet-era mosaics lest attention to such values disappear under Putin’s onslaught.

Telegram Channels Now Surpass TV as Source of News for Uzbeks, First All-Uzbekistan Study of Media Use Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – A joint EU-Uzbekistan government study of media use in that Central Asian republic, the first all-Uzbekistan poll of its kind, finds that Uzbeks are now more likely to turn to telegram channels than to television for news but they are still far more likely to trust TV than either telegram channels or social media.

            According to the representative sample of 1440 Uzbeks, 66.2 percent of them turn to telegram channels, 44.6 percent to television, and 41.6 percent to social networks for news; but 44.3 percent trust TV while only11.3 percent trust telegram channels and only 7.4 percent news sites.

            (For the study as a whole in Uzbek, see https://massmedia.uz/oz/news/h2rdxffx-duacoky7-eedktvj9-nmcr-uzb; for a discussion of its findings in Russian, see podrobno.uz/cat/obchestvo/telegram-operedil-televidenie-po-populyarnosti-sredi-istochnikov-novostey-v-uzbekistane/.)

            Despite these low levels of trust, Uzbeks are active users of social networks and telegram channels, with 64.8 percent saying they use social networks regularly and 86.1 percent saying the turn to telegram channels. Television attracts fewer and radio broadcasts even less, with more than 70 percent of Uzbeks saying they don’t use it at all.

            The differences between younger and older Uzbeks, those living cities and those living in villages, and those more educated and less educated parallel findings of media consumption in other post-Soviet states.

Deforestation of Siberia to Sell Wood to China a Primary Driver of Bear Attacks, Environmental Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – In order to cut enough wood to sell to China, Russian officials have allowed lumber firms to clear cut far larger areas than can easily be reforested and that together with the impact of climate change and widespread distribution of photographs of bears on social media have stoked fears this year that Russia is facing an explosion of deadly bear attacks.

            That is the judgment of environmental activists east of the Urals who point to deforestation as a primary driver, experts in Moscow, and the natural resources ministry which says that Russians taking pictures of bears to share online is attracting more attention to the problem (currenttime.tv/a/medvedi-napadayut-na-lyudei-pochemu/33887431.html).

            In fact, the ministry says, the number of bear attacks has not gone up dramatically during the past season at least as compared to the last few years. But the fact that selling lumber to China is part of the cause may lead those much-photographed attacks to trigger a rise of political environmentalism in Russia east of the Urals.

            That is all the more likely to be true because it is now widely known that China itself has restricted deforestation within its borders but is all too happy to purchase wood harvested that way in Russia, something corrupt and/or greedy Russian officials are all to happy to accommodate Beijing’s growing demand for wood.

Kazakhstan and Russia Suffering Most Immediately from Declining Water Level of Caspian Sea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – Kazakhstan and Russia are suffering the most from declining water levels on the Caspian Sea because, while the surface of the sea has falling relative to sea level by almost exactly the same amount everywhere, the depth of the sea is far lower in the ports and sea lane in the waters off those two countries than elsewhere.

            All of Kazakhstan’s ports and sea lanes require constant and expensive dredging to keep them open. In the case of the Russian Federation, the major port at Astrakhan and sea lanes leading from it are now at risk as well, although Moscow can and does have a better option in the case of Makhachkala (casp-geo.ru/v-kazahstane-iz-za-snizheniya-urovnya-vody-v-severnom-kaspii-poyavilis-novye-ostrova/).

            There, the decline in the depth of the sea is less; and that may be one of the reasons why Moscow relocated the main base of its Caspian Flotilla there from Astrkhan, although that highlights the problems the Russian navy will have if it seeks to move ships from the Caspian via the Volga-Don canal to waters off Ukraine.

            Russia also faces the problems arising from the fact that Dagestan, the most Muslim of all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation, is also one of the most restive, raising questions about security in the sea lanes and ports there and in transit across that region northward into Russia proper.

            The three other Caspian littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan – also face problems with siltification, but these threats are longer term, and the three countries have more time to address the situation. There, the shallowing of the Caspian in the north makes them relatively more important transportation routes.

Beria, Stalin’s Notorious Secret Police Chief, Making a Comeback in Putin’s Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 29 – The city of Cherepovets has proposed and Vologda governor Georgy Filimonov has promised to consider the creation of a mural showing among others Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief who was arrested and shot by Stalin’s successors.

            Filimonov praised Beria as “an outstanding historical figure” but said that the decision about whether to have a mural memorializing him would be made next year not now (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novosti/v-cerepovce-hotat-narisovat-mural-s-dzerzinskim-i-beriej/460527).

            Opponents of the idea point out that the Russian Supreme Court has ruled that Beria is among those not subject to rehabilitation for his crimes and that putting up his picture as a hero is an insult to his victims and a threat to the future of the country. But they are likely to be ignored.

            On the one hand, Putin is pushing the idea of a single stream of Russian history and cherry picking from the lives of past figures positive developments while ignoring their crimes. And on the other, the Kremlin dictator is known to be an admirer of Beria (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/putin-admires-beria-one-of-stalins-most.html).

            Efforts like those of Cherpovets to memorialize Beria raises a larger question: where will the rehabilitation of those guilty of the crimes of the Stalin era and other periods of Russian history stop. If a mural featuring Beria does go up, there would seem to be little possibility those who want to memorialize other notorious figures will not try to do the same.