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By Svetlana Kononova, Special to Russia Profile
August 30, 2010
A recent poll conducted by the independent Levada Center found that 73 percent of Russians do not plan to have children in the next two to three years, and 11 percent said that they do not want children at all. At the same time, 20 percent of respondents support the idea of imposing a tax on childlessness. But experts are skeptical of the idea – extra taxes or other financial restrictions won’t change people’s reproductive behavior, they say.
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By Svetlana Kononova, Special to Russia Profile
August 4, 2010
Summer 2010 has become the hottest on record in modern Russian history. The heat wave gripping western and central Russia since mid-June has changed lives dramatically. Temperatures have regularly topped between 35 and 37 degrees Celsius, highs not recorded for such a protracted period in 130 years. The longest past three-week stint of similar heat was registered in 1936.
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By Elena Rubinova, Special to Russia Profile
August 2, 2010
It might be too early to discuss the results of the “Year of Anton Chekhov,” which will run till the end of 2010 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Russia’s divine playwright, but it’s a good moment to have a look at the results of the ninth Chekhov International Theatre Festival, a two month theatre marathon (May 25 to July 30) which closed Russian capital last weekend. Its large-scale jubilee program featured major productions of Chekhov by theatre directors from Europe, Asia, North and South America, but the best works of Russian directors and co-productions were not overlooked either.
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By Svetlana Kononova, Special to Russia Profile
July 27, 2010
Russian First Lady Svetlana Medvedeva’s Foundation of Social and Cultural Initiatives held a national “Week against Abortions” from July 8 to 15. The initiative brought together health workers, sociologists, psychologists and religious organizations to raise awareness about the dangers of abortion. But despite the efforts of such information campaigns, and even though contraception is widely available, Russia still has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. In 2009 alone, 1.16 million abortions were carried out - that’s 66.7 terminations per 100 births.
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By Andrei Zolotov, Jr., Russia Profile
July 23, 2010
Last week Orthodox pilgrims from across Russia converged on Yekaterinburg and the Sverdlovsk region to mark the anniversary of the 1918 murders of Tsar Nicholas II and the royal family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. But the annual overnight processions tracing the royal family’s last journeys attract a hard-line fringe whose veneration of the canonized tsar takes little account of the historical facts and whose lobbying of the church hierarchy has clouded investigation of the circumstances in which the royal saints died.
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By Masha Charnay, Special to Russia Profile
July 21, 2010
Last week the legal case of free speech versus the Russian Orthodox Church came to an end when Moscow’s Tagansky District Court convicted two prominent museum curators of “inciting hatred and denigrating human dignity” by staging a controversial art exhibit. In what appears to be a gesture of clemency, the court allowed Yury Samodurov and Andrey Yerofeev to avoid the jail term that the prosecution insisted on, instead ordering them to pay a total of 350,000 rubles ($11,500) in fines. The outcome spurred vehement reaction at both ends of the ideological spectrum and has raised concerns about the forces shaping the Russian Zeitgeist.
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By Svetlana Kononova, Special to Russia Profile
July 19, 2010
Russia and the CIS countries are now the only places in the world where the rate of new HIV infections is growing, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) reported at the 18th International AIDS Conference, which began in Vienna on July 18. At the same time, specialized harm reduction programs are being cut back in the region, which might have dire consequences, experts say.
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By Elizabeth Shockman, Special to Russia Profile
July 14, 2010
While official statistics look grim for the volunteer movement in Russia, a closer look reveals some reasons for optimism. Studies and observations show that gone are the days of Soviet-era government-enforced labor, or post-Soviet Western-founded, Western-funded charity organizations. Russia’s volunteers and Russian charity organizations are growing in number, scope, and innovation. In short, Russian volunteerism is coming of age.
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By Svetlana Kononova, Special to Russia Profile
July 12, 2010
In terms of the number of suicides, Russia ranks fifth in the world, but now this trend is becoming increasingly noticeable among children. While the press reports on child suicides on a day-to-day basis, experts and civil society are trying to understand why many Russian children and teenagers do not care to live in this world.
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By Elena Rubinova, Special to Russia Profile
July 8, 2010
The Soviet Man was supposed to be a special breed of man—hard-working and indifferent toward material well-being—but although the union collapsed, this special species lives on.
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