Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations has a piece on Transitions Online which takes a look at some opinions of Gleb Pavlovsky and Yevgeny Gontmahker to debate what the Pikalyovo incident did and did not teach us about politics in Russia.Pikalyovo was also an attempt to address the inefficiencies in Putin's authoritarian project by creating what Russians call obratnaya sviaz ("reverse connection"). The system works, but only just. Russia still needs a modernization project, albeit not the "prosperity project," backed by good finances and sound macroeconomics, which the Putin-Medvedev tandem was originally supposed to implement. Not only will Russia have to proceed with fewer resources, it will have to tackle the flip side of a stronger state, what even Pavlovsky calls "severe monopolism in all social spheres," not just in government and the economy, but in the mass media and in society at ...

Its good to see Evgeny Morozov blogging over at FP - we've always liked his work, as there should be more written about the impact of the blogosphere on politics in authoritarian states.  Earlier this week he had a great post up about the Kremlin's attempts to tap into Russia's growing class of young and creative internet users to help "make [the] Kremlin's increasingly unappealing ideological package relevant to the younger generations."  No, the Nashi-inventor Vladislav Surkov was not behind this brilliant 21st century propaganda idea, but rather Gleb Pavlovsky.  Among many other strange government funded projects online, Morozov discovers a "school of bloggers" which teaches young supporters how to achieve the state's goals online, and a series of lectures and user-submitted YouTube videos.  I include the mentioned video after the jump, which is sumptiously soundtracked with ...

Here's is perhaps one of the more controversial segments from our interview with Paul Goble, the former State Department official who blogs over at Window on Eurasia.  Part of this discussion was related to a blog post written by Goble about Irina Pavlova's critique of Gleb Pavlovsky - which interestingly predicted the media campaign that would be waged in Washington by the latter (as evidenced by the FT and NYT pieces) a month before it happened.  Pavlova's argument, which will certainly raise some disagreement among many (including ourselves), is that the current leadership of Russia is increasingly behaving in a "Stalinist" fashion - especially with regard to the orally dictated secret directives to security forces.  This one is open to interpretation. ...

Political advisory Gleb Pavlovsky has given an extensive interview resulting in two separate articles in the Financial Times, one of which includes commentary about how he believes President Dmitry Medvedev sees the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (a horrendous travesty of law) and what he may do about it (probably nothing, in his opinion).

Most substantively, Mr Pavlovsky said that Medvedev disagrees with the second prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon who was arrested for tax evasion in 2003.

Most observers say the cases are politically motivated revenge by Mr Putin's entourage. Now Mr Khodorkovsky is on trial once again for roughly the same charges.

"This [the second Khodorkovsky prosecution] is an extremely dubious procedure," said Mr Pavlovsky. "Politically, it is hideous, absurd. Medvedev received this by way of inheritance. I think those who

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