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April 10, 2026
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"In the early 1970s, the KGB presence in India became one of the largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and GRU as many cover positions as they wished. Nor, like many other states, did India object to admitting Soviet intelligence officers who had been expelled by less hospitable regimes. The expansion of KGB operations in the Indian subcontinent (and first and foremost in India) during the early 1970s led the FCD to create a new department. Hitherto operations in India, as in the rest of non-Communist South and South-East Asia, had been the responsibility of the Seventh Department. In 1974 the newly founded Seventeenth Department was given charge of the Indian subcontinent."
"The KGB, in Kalugin’s view, was more successful than the CIA, partly because of its skill in exploiting the corruption which became endemic under Indira Gandhi’s regime. As Inder Malhotra noted, though corruption was not new in India: People expected Indira Gandhi’s party, committed to bringing socialism to the country, to be more honest and cleaner than the old undivided Congress. But this turned out to be a vain hope. On the contrary, compared with the amassing of wealth by some of her close associates, the misdeeds of the discarded Syndicate leaders, once looked upon as godfathers of corrupt Congressmen, began to appear trivial."
"India under Indira Gandhi was also probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else in the world, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion."
"The greatest successes of Soviet active measures in India remained the exploitation of the susceptibility of Indira Gandhi and her advisers to bogus CIA conspiracies against them."
"Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken to the Prime Minister’s house. Former Syndicate member S. K. Patil is reported to have said that Mrs Gandhi did not even return the suitcases... The Prime Minister is unlikely to have paid close attention to the dubious origins of some of the funds which went into Congress’s coffers. That was a matter which she left largely to her principal fundraiser, Lalit Narayan Mishra, who – though she doubtless did not realize it – also accepted Soviet money. On at least one occasion a secret gift of 2 million rupees from the Politburo to Congress (R) was personally delivered after midnight by the head of Line PR in New Delhi, Leonid Shebarshin. Another million rupees were given on the same occasion to a newspaper which supported Mrs Gandhi. Short and obese with several chins, Mishra looked the part of the corrupt politician he increasingly became. Indira Gandhi, despite her own frugal lifestyle, depended on the money he collected from a variety of sources to finance Congress (R). So did her son and anointed heir, Sanjay, whose misguided ambition to build an Indian popular car and become India’s Henry Ford depended on government favours."
"From 1967 to 1973 Haksar, a former protégé of Krishna Menon, was Mrs Gandhi’s most trusted adviser. One of her biographers, Katherine Frank, describes him as ‘a magnetic figure’ who became ‘probably the most influential and powerful person in the government’ as well as ‘the most important civil servant in the country’. Haksar set out to turn a civil service which, at least in principle, was politically neutral into an ideologically ‘committed bureaucracy’. His was the hand that guided Mrs Gandhi through her turn to the left, the nationalization of the banks and the split in the Congress Party. It was Haksar also who was behind the transfer of control of the intelligence community to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. His advocacy of the leftward turn in Mrs Gandhi’s policies sprang, however, from his socialist convictions rather than from manipulation by the KGB. But both he and Mrs Gandhi ‘were less fastidious than Nehru had been about interfering with the democratic system and structure of government to attain their ideological ends’. The journalist Inder Malhotra noted the growth of a ‘courtier culture’ in Indira Gandhi’s entourage: ‘The power centre in the world’s largest democracy was slowly turning into a durbar.’"
"The dissolution of the Soviet empire has given rise to a heightened nationalism which, in turn, projects a mythical and majestic Slavic past."
"We Slavs consider ourselves to be new arrivals, but that is untrue. Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians had been living here [in the southern Urals] since the Stone Age and had been incorporated into the Kazakhs, Bashkirs, and Slavs; such is the common thread linking us all."
"Reliance upon migrations as the principal agent of social change has been typical of Russian archaeological interpretations, along with a blurring of the distinction between ethnic, linguistic, racial, and cultural entities, the isolation of racial/ethnic groups by the craniometric methods of physical anthropology, and the use of linguistic paleontology to reconstruct the development of cultural groups."
"It is worth noting that 'the Aryan studies' are reviving once again under this umbrella, and once again, like in Germany early this century, they are closely related to occultism."
"Recently, some Ukrainian archaeologists have taken Sylenko's theory of the Ukraine quite seriously as the most ancient and the most important centre of human civilisation and are making attempts to confirm that."
"In the 1970s and early 1980s, the state recommended that Soviet archaeologists avoided any display of Chinese artefacts found from the Golden Horde sites and played down the close links between the peoples of the Russian Far East and China."
"[Shnirelman writes that nationalist concerns in the former U.S.S.R. are creating] an explicitly ethnocentric vision of the past, a glorification of the great ancestors of the given people, who are treated as if they had made the most valuable contribution to the culture of all humanity."
"The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques (I don’t much pique myself upon , So that I do not grossly err in facts, Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)— Having been used to serve on horses’ backs, And no great dilettanti in topography Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases Their chiefs to order,—were all cut to pieces."
"Half-stripped, or wrapped in furs and gowns, The broken ranks went on: They ran if any one called out “The Cossacks of the Don!”"
"Kazaki, kazaki, Edut, edut po Berlinu Nashi kazaki!"
"Given Putin’s revival of many aspects of the Soviet past, many are quick to label the official art his regime has been promoting as “socialist realism 2.0,” but specialists on Russian culture say that is inappropriate because in two important ways, the situation in Russian art today is fundamentally different than was the case in Soviet times."
"At the end of Soviet times, some talked about creating “socialism with a human face.”. But now, Russia instead has created “capitalism with an inhuman face,” a system in which the worst features of capitalism have been exacerbated and its best minimized or eliminated, [economist] Igor Nikolayev says."
"The Soviet Union was able to generate rapid growth even under extractive institutions because the Bolsheviks built a powerful centralized state and used it to allocate resources toward industry. But as in all instances of growth under extractive institutions, this experience did not feature technological change and was not sustained. Growth first slowed down and then totally collapsed. Though ephemeral, this type of growth still illustrates how extractive institutions can stimulate economic activity."
"A real Rutulian man is one who catches a wolf with his bare hands (from Rutulian folklore). (Musaev G. "Рутулы" (1997))"
"Deputy foreign ministers and special representatives of BRICS countries for the Middle East and Northern Africa have underlined importance of non-interference in the work of Syria’s Constitutional Committee in Geneva, they said in a joint statement following a consultative meeting held via videoconference on Friday. The meeting participants noted the importance of lunching the committee with the decisive contribution of the Astana peace process guarantors and all other countries involved in the peaceful resolution of the conflict and also welcomed efforts of Geir Pedersen, UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for Syria, to establish a sustainable and effective operation of this body. "Conviction was expressed that to reach common ground the Constitutional Committee members should be guided by pursuit of compromise and constructive cooperation without foreign interference," the text reads. The parties also reaffirmed their commitment to sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Syria, noting that the conflict in this country cannot be resolved militarily. "They also reaffirmed their commitment to advancing political process, led and guided by Syrians themselves through the UN cooperation in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which should result in a constitutional reform as well as free and fair elections," the diplomats stressed."
"Fruitful exchange of opinions concerning the drug situation in the BRICS states, the international and regional trends of illegal trafficking in narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors, as well as the impact of various internal and external factors on the situation took place during the summit.... The common points emerged during the discussions include need for real time information sharing among the member states and need to curb increased drug trafficking through maritime routes. Misuse of darknet and other advanced technologies for drug trafficking was one of the key focal areas of the meeting... The growing economic might of BRICS countries, their significance as one of the main driving forces of global economic development, their substantial population and abundant natural resources form the foundation of their influence on the international scene and are the driving forces behind the grouping. Among other areas of collaboration, matters pertaining to drug trafficking is an important area of cooperation among the BRICS member states"
"The role of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) during COVID-19 has validated the original rationale to create a new multilateral development bank... As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly spread from Wuhan in Hubei province to surrounding regions, the Chinese Government turned to the newest multilateral development bank, the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) for support. Within weeks of the loan approval, the NDB disbursed $1bn to Hubei, Henan and Guangdong, the three most affected provinces in China. This loan, the single largest of the Bank to date, was earmarked to provide financial support for unplanned emergency health expenditure related to the fight against COVID-19....In 2008 for example, when few financial institutions were lending during the global financial crisis, it was the multilateral development banks which significantly increased their lending.... Under usual circumstances, it can take several months for loans to be disbursed for an infrastructure project. Disbursements for COVID-19 related assistance were made as bullet payments within three to four weeks after the loans were approved.... To date, the Bank approved and largely disbursed $4bn, which comprised of a $1bn COVID-19 response loan each to China, Brazil, India and South Africa. The full $10bn to be allocated during 2020 represents additional development assistance which would not have been available if the NDB was not created five years ago."
"Eradicating poverty is high on the list of both the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals. Both, were endorsed by the heads of state or government of the 190-plus member countries of the United Nations, including BRICS. As a member of the UN as well as BRICS, China's contribution to global poverty reduction is much more than its contribution to global economic growth... China is set to eliminate absolute poverty by the end of this year... There is no doubt that the fast economic growth in China and India has played a key role in reducing poverty in the two countries. Slower but positive growth－before the novel coronavirus pandemic broke out－also helped the other BRICS countries to lower their poverty rates... In short, all BRICS countries have made progress in poverty alleviation work, even though the progress has been uneven due to their different growth rates and the levels of inequality in their societies. But despite growth playing a dominant role in poverty reduction, it would be a mistake to overlook inequality, because a high level of inequality directly undermines growth potential and indirectly offsets the beneficial impact of growth on poverty reduction."
"The much hyped rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has lately been met with equally fervent declarations of their demise. In this article... I contest this assessment by arguing that the emerging powers were never solely, nor most importantly, merely an economic phenomenon. Instead, I show that emerging powers—specifically Brazil, India and China—have become an important political force in the global trading system and have had a profound and lasting impact on the World Trade Organization (WTO)). Contrary to the widespread assumption that these countries are too diverse to ally, I argue that the emerging powers displayed a remarkable degree of unity and cooperation, working in close concert to successfully challenge the dominance of the US and other established powers. As evidenced by the collapse of the Doha Round, the collective rise of Brazil, India and China substantially disrupted the functioning of one of the core institutions of the liberal economic order created under US hegemony."
"The historian George Richards wrote in 1918:12 “[T]he religion of Russia is broader and deeper than the creed, polity, cultus, and precepts of the Church of Russia. The life of the spirit defies definition… It consists, not of temples and sacraments, priests and monks, dogmas and canons, but of moods and motives… and ideals— all welling up from the soul’s depth.” He added: “Her literature, art, music, philosophy, religion, theater, and dancing are something intrinsically Russian. Her dominant spirit is not the product of Byzantine Christianity. It is rooted in the Slavic nature… and in oriental mysticism. The remote past with its passions, dreams, fears, and hopes throbs in the living present.”"
"Svetlana Koltovskaia, has this to say about shamans in the federal Russian Republic of Sakha: Sakha (Yakut) people do not use the word “shaman” in their language. We have both female and male shamans. Male shaman is called oyuun (ойуун) and female shaman is called udagan (удаган). The word’s etymology is still not known. Some researchers believe that it comes from the word “oy” which means “jump”, for Sakha shamans jump during their ritual which symbolizes their leaving the “middle” world to go to the spirit world. In Sakha, white shamans are called aiyy oyuuna (айыы ойууна). They do not have to wear a special outfit to do their ritual, and they only deal with good spirits. They are sort of regular people, and they have their own community and practice their thing to these days. Dark shamans are called abaahy ayuuna (абааhы ойууна). They serve as mediators between people and evil spirits. There are many types of dark shamans with different status."
"On May 22, the Parish of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary was “liquidated” by the Regional Court of Omsk. But this may not be the end [of] the crackdown on [the] Greek Catholics in Russia.The FSB Directorate for the Omsk Region told the media that “further investigations will have to resolve the question of on whose initiative the priest acted. It is possible that the fate of the Uniate [i.e., Greek Catholic] Church in Russia will depend on the answer to this question.”"
"The scholar Sergei Filatov has stated: “Shamanism was the basic form of religiosity among Yakuts before 1917… According to ancient beliefs, the first Yakuts Sakha Saaryn Toon and Saby Vaai Khotun— were gods who had come down to Earth from the Highest Heaven with the great mission to create the Sakha nation. The Yakuts also had several beliefs which contemporary neopagans have interpreted as monotheism, including the belief in a supreme god, the Sun (fire), Aiyy (Tengri), which has its roots in Pan-Turkic religious myth. However, in everyday religious practice little attention was paid to this supreme god.”"
"Russians should realize that they are Orthodox in the first place; Russians in the second place; and only in the third place, people."
"Many Russian and Western scholars have studied Soviet efforts to destroy organized religion and spread atheism in the Soviet population, but far fewer have focused on the steps Soviet officials took to wipe out shamanism, the traditional faith of many peoples in Siberia and the Russian Far East. But Moscow’s efforts in that regard are instructive both to the extent that they paralleled what the communists did to more conventionally structured faiths and even more to the extent they failed because the Soviets did not understand what they were up against and could not deal with a religious practice lacking the kind of organization they could take over and subvert."
"You know, as I already mentioned, in 988 Prince Vladimir himself was baptized following the example of his grandmother, Princess Olga, and then he baptized his retinue, and then gradually, over the course of several years, he baptized all Rus. It was a lengthy process – from pagans to Christians, it took many years. But in the end, this Orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of the Russian people. When Russia expanded and absorbed other nations who profess Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, Russia has always been very loyal to those people who profess other religions. This is its strength. This is absolutely clear. And the fact is that the main postulates, main values are very similar, not to say the same, in all world religions I’ve just mentioned and which are the traditional religions of the Russian Federation, Russia. By the way, Russian authorities were always very careful about the culture and religion of those peoples who came to join the Russian Empire. This, in my opinion, forms the basis of both security and stability of the Russian statehood – all the peoples inhabiting Russia basically consider it their Motherland."
"The American historian James Westfall Thompson wrote in 1916 on the conversion of the Baltic Slavs by the German Church. He believed the treatment meted out to the Slavs by the Germans had a parallel in how Spanish America treated Peru in “the spoliation of a weaker people by an avaricious priest class backed up by the sword of a powerful government.” Thompson added: “[The Slavs] accepted Christianity as they accepted German domination, superficially and morosely.” There were many revolts by the Slavs against the tyranny of the Germans. But although the Church eventually triumphed, the faith as practised remained deeply mystical, and quite different from the dogma of the Church."
"[The Putin regime] is serving notice to the world that not only the practice[s] of religious liberty, but even the possibility of discussing about freedom of religion or belief have been abrogated in the [Russian Federation]."
", a Finno-Ugric nation in the Middle Volga most of whose members are followers animism, are now engaged in the establishment of new structures that will help them ensure the survival not only of their religion but their nationality and democratic traditions as well."
"The [Falun Gong] movement poses no threats to Russia, and for years it has been depicted with benevolence by most Russian media, which even praised its Qigong practices as beneficial for the practitioners’ health. Even after, under Chinese [Communist Party] pressure, key texts were declared “extremist” in 2008, activities in Russia continued. In 2020, seven Falun-Gong-related organizations were declared “undesirable” in Russia, but until the 2022 war in Ukraine the label “undesirable,” unlike “extremist,” did not totally prevent organizations from operating in the country."
"The symbol of the United Russia party, the bear, was precisely chosen. Especially if you remember the fairy tale "Teremok". <...> And then the bear came and said: "It's me, bear, you're all screwed!" He sat down on the teremok, and it fell apart."
"... a blank concept for a political party of large landowners called "Possessing Together". It included a ten-page Mozartian-inspired manifesto, an instructive address to fellow citizens, theses on working with rural youth, and more. <...> The central ideologeme of the movement, "Family Values", was especially impressive. <...> The main thing is that such a humanistic ideology would look advantageous in the international arena, where no one would understand what kind of family they are discussing. The concept included visual materials. A strong impression <...> was made by a poster where a brutal bearded Chechen, resembling a young Karl Marx, pulled a raking paw-swastika to the chest of his motherland, who held a baby with eyes full of Byzantine sadness. Behind the motherland was a rural-industrial landscape with beet-aluminum connotations. A mustachioed grenadier in a shako with a double-headed eagle stuck a blue-white-red bayonet into the paw of a Chechen. An alarming bloody inscription crossed the poster: "Hands off family values!" There was another version where a bearded Chechen with a red flag covered with green letters and a grenade in his teeth tried to climb a sparkling oil rig, but the searchlight beam, which brave guys in tricolor tights controlled, pulled out his sinister figure from the darkness (<…> it was torn off from one of the famous paintings on the theme of "storming the Reichstag")."
"The symbol of the main Russian political party United Russia is a bear! An amazingly accurate symbol. He destroys beehives and bird nests, rides a motorcycle in the circus, dances the mistress, and most importantly, sleeps for half a year and sucks his paw!"
"There is nothing illegal in the similarity of the CEC campaign with the election posters of United Russia. Yes, there is a similarity, but following the law, the party that decides to hang billboards coordinates their sketches with a special commission, so there can be no claims against United Russia."
"United Russia reminds me of a worse copy of the CPSU... Yes, we have everything. There is a parliament, courts, the president, the prime minister, and so on...and all this is on the ground. But you know - more imitation. There is no efficient operation."
"I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves. And it is the duty of every patriot and citizen of our country to make sure that this party is destroyed."
"United Russia will survive on the condition that there will be a one-party dictatorship in the country, but the presence of at least some powers in Medvedev dooms it to extinction."
"Speaking about United Russia, it is useful to remember that a critical position is always more convenient, but this party is the backbone of a stable modern political system, with all its pluses and minuses. It is its members who perform a huge amount of routine work. Of course, there are no aliens - everything is not without birth spots, but it is ridiculous to blame only the members of United Russia for this. It is important not to reduce the issues of the country's political structure to the demonization of United Russia and its members, especially since there are very different people there. Criticism is necessary, especially since the understanding of the depravity of the one-party system reigns in society."
"We have many bilateral agreements with public organizations. We are already working with them, but we are working in some specific areas. The creation of the front is the next step in the consolidation of United Russia and outside organizations. We would like to involve public organizations in writing the program. We would like as many public associations and organizations as possible to offer their ideas for the further development of our country."
"The reality is that today, only United Russia is probably capable of this work. First of all, due to the branching of its structures and the dominant position in local and regional authorities. It has the necessary organizational, intellectual, and political resources to solve such large-scale tasks and is ready to take responsibility to the country for implementing the plans."
"United Russia has no ideology, no clear program, but has two goals: to stay in the chair and cling to the main money bag - the budget."
"I propose to create what in political practice is called a broad popular front. It is a tool for uniting congenial political forces. I would very much like United Russia, some other political parties, trade unions, women's, youth, and veteran organizations, including veterans of the Great Patriotic War and veterans of the war in Afghanistan, that all people who are united by a common desire to strengthen our country, with the idea of finding the most optimal solutions to the problems we face, could work within a single platform. This form of uniting the efforts of all political forces is used in different countries and by different political forces — left, right, and patriotic — this is a tool for uniting political forces close in spirit. I would like the Party, other parties, and public organizations to see all people united by the desire to improve the country's life. This association can be called the All-Russian People's Front, within which non-partisan candidates could enter the Duma on the list of United Russia."
"This party is only a few days old. It became a party only when Putin headed it. And before that, there was an association without ideology, program, and leader."