David Satter
Washington, D.C.
Russia scholar, Author, Adjunct Prof. @JohnsHopkins. Former Moscow Correspondent, @FT.
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Articles by David Satter
Simplifying the shower
A small deck-fill cap, shown with funnel, at far left on facing page, and with cap removed, at left on facing page, is the only visible change in the galley. David’s modification called for a water tank in unused space below the counter. With the addition of warm water, this tank supplies a shower in the nearby head. Issue 41 : Mar/Apr 2005 Here’s a shower idea I incorporated into the updating of our 1973 Bristol 30.
Better bilge access
Issue 51 : Nov/Dec 2006 On my 1973 Bristol 30, bilge access was not very good. When I purchased the boat, there was only a Whale Gusher 10 pump in the cockpit connected to a strainer in the bilge. Later I realized the pump needed to be rebuilt. Reaching the strainer (or even seeing it) was tough. The access through the cabin sole panel was on a sharp angle. The floor panel was positioned nicely over the water tank but not directly over the bilge.
The Character of Russia
For centuries, the Russian traveler, crossing the border, felt an inexplicable lightness, as if an unseen burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
Russian Business Culture | David A.Dyker
The return to the Russian presidency of Vladimir Putin gives us an opportunity to review some of the eternal questions of Russian economic historiography - why is Russian business culture so different, how much does this have to do with the peculiar traditions of the Russian state, and why does it never seem to change? The last question is the most important from the point of view of policy-makers and business leaders outside Russia, and the most intriguing.
“Is it done yet?”
Quester takes up residence in rural New Jersey for a refit that will take four years. Issue 73 : Jul/Aug 2010 Every night for four years, when I came in from the yard after working on my 30-foot sailboat, I heard the same question from my family. “Is it done yet?” How far should one go when fixing up a 30-year-old boat? I should put it in the water and go sailing. That’s what “they” say to do: fix it a little each year and keep sailing. However, what most people do is not for me.
Russia Could Use Some American Ideals
WSJ Opinion: A Divided America at 250 Is Still the Envy of the WorldPlay video: WSJ Opinion: A Divided America at 250 Is Still the Envy of the World
What’s Wrong With Russia?
Jason Smart: The Russian military is struggling as casualties per square kilometer seized has surged. Incredibly, it increased over 8,700 percent between January and March. Yet for some in Russia the war has not been all so grim. Since the war began, Russian billionaire wealth has grown 97 percent. Those in Putin’s inner circle have gained $68.6 billion dollars – seven times more than oligarchs who are not connected to him.
Drones rusos en Europa: Putin crea un escenario para culpar a la OTAN
A la luz de las crecientes tensiones en Europa por las incursiones de drones y aeronaves rusas en el espacio aéreo de países de la OTAN, Rusia está intentando crear la impresión de que la Alianza Atlántica está fabricando incidentes para tener una excusa que le permita escalar «la guerra contra la Federación Rusa».
Putin regime's actions suggest Russia facilitated Boston Marathon bombing
OPINION: As President Trump weighs a new partnership with Russia, he would do well to consider Russia’s role in the Boston Marathon bombing 12 years ago, April 15, 2013, in which three people were killed and more than 500 injured.
Trump’s big bet on Vlad bound to backfire - Putin has transformed Russia into a war machine
President Trump’s announcement of immediate talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine without any concessions from Moscow is setting the stage for the destruction of the post-World War II order and one of the greatest betrayals of an ally in American history. In his statement, Trump quoted Putin on the virtue of “common sense,” showing he is dealing with a country he does not understand.
Opinion: The Russian Apartment Bombings
In the early morning of Sept. 9, 1999, a massive explosion tore through an apartment building at 19 Guryanova Street, a working-class area of Moscow. The central section of the building was obliterated, and fierce fires burned under the rubble. “It’s like hell underneath,” one rescuer said. “Even if they survived the blast, they would have been burned alive.” In the end, 100 people were killed and 690 injured. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
Opinion | A Century After Lenin’s Death, His Evil Legacy Lives On
WSJ Opinion: Choosing a President in a World of Enemies Your browser does not support HTML5 video. 0:00 Paused 0:00 / 5:25 WSJ Opinion: Choosing a President in a World of EnemiesPlay video: WSJ Opinion: Choosing a President in a World of Enemies Vladimir Lenin has been gone for a century, but the evil he did lives on. The first leader of the Soviet Union died on Jan. 21, 1924, in the Moscow-area village of Gorki, after repeated strokes.
Opinion | A Century After Lenin’s Death, His Evil Legacy Lives On
Vladimir Lenin has been gone for a century, but the evil he did lives on. The first leader of the Soviet Union died on Jan. 21, 1924, in Gorki, Russia (now called Nizhny Novgorod), after repeated strokes. His legacy is a world whose moral equilibrium he helped to destroy. The Soviet Union was based on Marxism, a secular religion, and Lenin was the architect of its system of antimorality. For Lenin, as he said in his speech to the Komsomol on Oct.
Opinion | The Peril of Abandoning Ukraine
With money for Ukraine running out, there is much talk in Congress about the U.S. southern border but scant attention to menacing developments inside Russia. If aid is cut off and Ukraine is forced to accept a Russian victory, the result won’t be peace but Russian preparation for a new war. The war in Ukraine activated the Soviet totalitarian psychological inheritance in Russia, which was partially dormant but never disappeared.
A Kremlin in Disarray
Prigozhin's mutiny spells an uncertain future.
Opinion | Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the U.S.S.R.
Dec. 29, 2022 3:48 pm ET A hundred years ago, on Dec. 30, 1922, representatives of the “Ukrainian socialist republic” initiated a formal agreement with Russia and the republics of Belarus and Transcaucasia to create a new nation, the Soviet Union.
Opinion | Mikhail Gorbachev’s Undoing Was His Devotion to Soviet Ideas
Mikhail Gorbachev’s goal, according to his associates, was “socialism with a human face.” The belief that communism was reformable was what led him to risk introducing fundamental change. Soviet citizens were allowed to speak and demonstrate without fear of arrest, to open businesses and to travel abroad. Gorbachev put an end to the Cold War, renounced the Marxist idea of class struggle as the driving force of history, and refused to intervene to save communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
Opinion | How to Break Through Putin’s Propaganda in Russia
President Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be removed from power. But only Russians can remove Mr. Putin. That is why, in addition to supplying arms to Ukraine, the U.S. needs to take steps to reach the Russian people. Mr. Putin understands that to prevail in Ukraine he must maintain the support of the Russian public.
Opinion | Weakness at Home Drives Putin to Invade Ukraine
Russia’s preparations to invade Ukraine and threats of nuclear war should come as no surprise. Vladimir Putin is ready to resort to a level of blackmail not seen since the days of the Soviet Union because threatening war is the most effective way for him to consolidate support for his senescent regime. The use of foreign aggression to rally support for the regime is not new in Russia.
Opinion | When the Hammer (and Sickle) Fell
At midnight on Dec. 31, 1991, the chimes rang out from Savior Tower in the Kremlin and fireworks lit up the sky, marking the final end of the Soviet Union, which claimed to have created heaven on earth. During its 70-year life, the Soviet regime killed at least 20 million of its citizens for political reasons. It also had the mesmerizing quality of a mirage.
Opinion | The Coup That Failed—but Toppled Communism
As dawn broke on Aug. 19, 1991, tanks and armored cars converged on Moscow and Soviet citizens received the stunning news that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been overthrown in a coup. At 6:06 a.m., the news agency Tass announced that he had been removed for reasons of health, and power was in the hands of a shadowy group calling itself the State Committee for the Emergency Situation. For the next three days, the fate of the world hung in the balance.
Opinion | The Rhodes Scholarship Turns Against Its Legacy of Excellence
The Rhodes Scholarship stood for more than 120 years, through cataclysm and world war, as a symbol of individual excellence. But since 2019, under the shadow of a supposed reckoning with racism, the scholarships have been corrupted from within.
Opinion | Biden Should Follow His ‘Killer’ Instinct
President Biden said “I do” last week when asked if he believes Vladimir Putin is a “killer.” That’s a first step toward addressing Russian crimes openly, which would shield Russians in danger of repression and strengthen American security as well. U.S. administrations have long been reluctant to call attention to Russian crimes. In February 2017, in an interview on Fox News, President Trump responded to the statement that Mr. Putin was a killer by suggesting American leaders are no better.
Fear, Loathing, and Surrealism in Russia – - Emina Melonic
The conception of the Soviet Union in the Western mind is often tinged with images of espionage, long bread lines, poverty, gulags, dissidence, propaganda, and other extreme forms of totalitarianism. While all of these are true, people generally don’t think about such matters on a deeper level. Instead, Western thinking about the Soviet Union was and remains an exercise in clear-cut dichotomies that included no nuance of human conditions.
Opinion | Soviet Politics, American Style
On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, gave his farewell speech and more than seven decades of Russian revolutionary socialism came to an end.
100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead - by David Satter
Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization. The revolutionaries’ capture of train stations, post offices and telegraphs took place as the city slept and resembled a changing of the guard.
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Paperback)
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Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union
Main Reviews Contents Excerpt Links Awards David Satter arrived in the Soviet Union in June, 1976 as the correspondent of the Financial Times of London and entered a country that was a giant theater of the absurd.
Opinion | Putin Can’t Afford to Leave Office When His Term Ends
Vladimir Putin is prepared to run for a fifth term as Russian president. “What’s the point of being subtle?” asked close Putin ally and parliamentary deputy Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in proposing to abolish term limits. “This is about us and the future of the country.” But Mr. Putin left himself with little alternative. If he wants to protect his cronies and avoid a grim historical reckoning, he cannot surrender power. ...
Opinion | Hold Russia Accountable for MH17
Four men have been charged with murder in connection with the 2014 destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 passengers. But the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team can’t produce justice in the case unless the U.S. is ready to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable. Russian authorities are refusing to cooperate with the investigation, and Mr. Putin told journalists last week that there’s “absolutely no proof” Moscow participated.
Opinion | A Pioneer Who Witnessed Revolutions
‘We have to exterminate the patrones, the bosses of the big estates,” a left-wing activist told Georgie Anne “Gee Gee” Geyer who was in Chile in 1970 to report on President Salvador Allende, the world’s first freely elected Marxist leader. Geyer, who died May 15 at 84, had gone to the southern city of Concepción, where leftists were seizing land, to try to learn whether Allende intended to keep his promise to respect democratic liberties.
Opinion | Collusion or Russian Disinformation?
Without intending to, the Mueller report has solved the mystery of the Trump-Russia affair. It shows that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia but Russian intelligence used disinformation to create the impression that he did. It is hard for Americans to grasp that in the eerie world of Russian intelligence, it would be normal to discredit a U.S. leader by depicting him as a friend and to support his opponent by depicting her as an enemy. But this is the reality. ...
Opinion | When Russian Democracy Died
Dramatically violating the constitution he swore to uphold, President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree abolishing the Russian Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, on Sept. 21, 1993. That set the stage for a two-day civil war in October, which cost at least 123 lives, and led to the rise of a dictatorship. By December a new constitution had come into force creating a super presidency and a pocket Parliament, the State Duma, which does not have the ability to contest executive power.
Opinion | The Satirist Who Mocked the Kremlin—and Russian Character
‘I have been instructed to inform you,” an official told Vladimir Voinovich in 1980, “that the patience of the Soviet authorities and the people has come to an end.” The official, a district boss, loomed over Voinovich, who wrote that he imagined the next step would be execution on the spot. Instead he was stripped of citizenship and forced into exile near Munich for “defaming the motherland.” Voinovich, who died July 27 at 85, returned to the Soviet Union in 1990.
Putin’s Aggression Is the Issue in Helsinki
President Trump arrived Sunday in Helsinki in the manner of most of his predecessors: with little awareness of recent Russian history and in apparent confusion about what a meeting with Vladimir Putin can achieve. Reacting to concerns about Mr. Putin’s career in Russian intelligence, Mr. Trump said at a recent rally: “Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people.” According to a news report, White House advisers describe the Trump-Putin meeting “as a chance to reset a tense relationship.”
How to Answer Russia’s Escalation
The attempted murder of Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal in the U.K. represents a serious escalation. The March 5 attack, in which his daughter Yulia was also poisoned, shows that Moscow is directing terrorism toward defectors and using it as a political weapon against the West. The West should respond by imposing sanctions against President Vladimir Putin himself.
The U.S. Must Speak Out on Russian Terror | National Review
A portrait of Boris Nemtsov at a commemorative march in Moscow, Russia, March 1, 2015. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters) Ignoring the Putin regime’s crimes lends credibility to their disinformation campaigns. In the face of Russia’s information war against the West, the U.S. needs to reject diplomatic restraint and speak openly about the Putin regime’s use of terror against its own people. When we acquiesce in the regime’s crimes, we provide cover for Russian disinformation as a whole.
A Christmas Encounter With the ‘Russian Soul’
As tension with Russia deepens, it may seem as if Americans have little in common with those living under Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. But I have witnessed the triumph of good over evil in Russia many times, including on one striking occasion 25 years ago this month, when an expression of the “Russian soul” defused a dangerous situation and gave me hope for the country’s future. Christmas Eve 1992 was bitter cold in Moscow, and the mood of the city was marked by depression and despair.
100 Years of Communism-and 100 Million Dead
The Bolshevik plague that began in Russia was the greatest catastrophe in human history. Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization.
100 Years of Communism-and 100 Million Dead
Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization. The revolutionaries’ capture of train stations, post offices and telegraphs took place as the city slept and resembled a changing of the guard.
How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life
Did the U.S. choose to ignore the source of 1999 bombings that propelled the security-agency bureaucrat to the top post he has never relinquished? August 29, 2017 • 9:30 PM It is impossible to evaluate events in Russia today without understanding the mysterious series of bombings in 1999 that killed 300 civilians and created the conditions for Vladimir Putin to become Russia’s dictator for life. The bombings changed the course of Russia’s post-Soviet history.
Trump Must Stand Strong Against Putin
When President Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Hamburg on Friday, he needs to put aside any thought of another “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations. This is necessary not because of Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election but because any compromise of the American deterrent posture toward Russia will make a dangerous international situation even worse. U.S. and Russian officials have cited Ukraine and Syria as areas where agreement may be possible.
Boris Nemtsov Assassination: Evidence Increasingly Points to Putin | National Review
On June 29, 2017, a Moscow jury found five Chechens guilty of the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. The evidence, however, tells a different story. It shows that the murder was carried out not by the defendants but by the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO) under direct orders from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
From Russia With Chaos
June 12, 2017 6:43 pm ET As U.S politicians plunge into the hall of mirrors that is Russian intelligence, they are assuming that Russians think as they do—a perfect way to misunderstand Moscow’s real intentions. Portions of the “resistance” to President Trump are convinced he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. But the known facts do not support a Russia-Trump plot to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Trump Gives a Boost to Putin’s Propaganda
President Trump’s expression of “respect” for Vladimir Putin in an interview that aired over the weekend, and his comparison of extrajudicial killings by the Putin regime to American actions, has ushered in a new era in U.S.-Russian relations. Never before has an American president implied that political murder is acceptable or that the U.S. is guilty of similar crimes.
The 'Trump Report' Is a Russian Provocation - by David Satter
Deeply divided and in the grip of partisan passions, U.S. society is slipping into a quagmire of Russian disinformation in which the Putin regime will find it very easy to create reality and destroy facts. This has implications not only for U.S. security but also for the country’s psychological health.
Russia & Trump -- Intelligence Report Serves Russia’s Propaganda Purposes
Vladimir Putin attends his annual end-of-year news conference in Moscow (Reuters: Sergei Karpukhin) It is part of Russia’s strategy to disrupt U.S. politics and institutions for years to come. Deeply divided and in the grip of partisan passions, U.S. society is slipping into a quagmire of Russian disinformation in which the Putin regime will find it very easy to create reality and destroy facts. This has implications not only for U.S. security but also for the country’s psychological health.
Russia & Trump -- Intelligence Report Serves Russia’s Propaganda Purposes | National Review
Deeply divided and in the grip of partisan passions, U.S. society is slipping into a quagmire of Russian disinformation in which the Putin regime will find it very easy to create reality and destroy facts. This has implications not only for U.S. security but also for the country’s psychological health.
Russia Questions for Rex Tillerson
With U.S.-Russia relations at a possible turning point, the confirmation hearings of Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson need to go beyond superficialities and weigh the true nature of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Senators should demand that the former Exxon Mobil CEO demonstrate an understanding of recent developments regarding three issues: the 2015 assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.
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