Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 2 – Оver the last
few years, Radio Liberty has made a major contribution to understanding the
regions of the Russian Federation, opening reginal web portals devoted to the North
Caucasus (kavkazr.com/ and radiomarsho.com),
the Middle Volga-Urals region (idelreal.org/), and
Siberia and the Far East (idelreal.org/).
Now, it has launched a fifth, severreal.org, devoted to nine federal subjects in the North-West Federal District of the Russian Federation, an area that includes St. Petersburg and that has attracted more attention recently as a result of protests against Moscow’s plans to
open trash dumps there and the nuclear
accident at Severodvinsk.
Russia’s regions, especially predominantly ethnic Russian ones receive little attention unless they are the
sites of protests, violence, scandals, natural or technogenic disasters or a visit by a Moscow official. But
just as the United States isn’t Washington and France isn’t
Paris, so too Russia isn’t Moscow – and its regions merit more attention in their
own right.
Severreal.org appears set to make a
major contribution to such an understanding just as the four the regional portals
already have. Russia's regions and the regionalism they are generating are too important to be neglected any longer.
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