Russian Voices on Post-crimea Russia ― An Almanac of Counterpoint Essays from 2015-2018

Russia has changed dramatically since the beginning of this decade. This volume presents a unique collection of articles by Russian scholars and experts, originally published in Russian in the journal Kontrapunkt (Counterpoint). The authors include Yulia Bederova, Andrey Desnitsky, Maria Eismont, Aleksandr Gorbachev, Tatiana Nefedova, Ella Paneyakh, Sergey Parkhomenko, Nikolay Petrov, Kirill Rogov, Sergey Sergeev, Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, Andrew Soldatov, Svetlana Solodovnik, Anna Tolstova, Aleksandr Verkhovsky, and Natalia Zubarevich. Their essays cover a broad range of subjects from the Russian political scene and state-society relations to the politics of culture and the realm of ideas and symbols. These contributions offer fascinating insights into Russia’s multifaceted and complex development after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Maria Lipman studied linguistics at Moscow State University. She was cofounder and deputy editor of the Russian weekly news magazines Itogi (“Summing up”), published in cooperation with Newsweek, from 1995 to 2001, and Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal (“Weekly magazine”) from 2001 to 2003. Lipman was editor-in-chief of the policy journal Pro et Contra (Carnegie Moscow Center) from 2005 to 2014. From 2015 till 2018, she edited the Russian analytical quarterly Counterpoint, published by the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. She has coedited and contributed to several volumes, including The New Autocracy (2018) and Putin’s Russia (2015). From 2001 till 2011, Lipman wrote op-ed columns on Russian politics, media, and society for the Washington Post, and, 2012–2017, for the New Yorker online.