The recent controversy surrounding Edward Snowden has again tested the relationship between Russia and the United States. On June 23, 2013, Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who leaked thousands of pages of classified…
The figure of False Dmitrii I is, possibly, among the greatest mysteries of Russian history. His story is inherently related to the history of Russian-Polish struggle. False Dmitrii I, a pretender, who claimed to be the son of Ivan IV the Terrible,…
Alaska was the site of the first major Russian settlement in North America. Grigory Shelikhov (1747-1795), a fur trader, established the Three Saints Bay colony at Kodiak Island. For the next century this colony represented a core area for fur…
On April 9, 1991, a national referendum established Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union. The news came to the Georgian people on a day meant to remember the April 9, 1989 “Tbilisi Massacre.” It was reported in the Los Angeles Times that…
This chart shows the yields (on an annually adjusted basis) of Russian short-term, ruble-denominated bonds, called GKO's. During the mid-90s, foreign investors poured money into GKO's driving yields down from over 100% in 1995 to as low as 17.2% in…