A Messenger to Moscow

Anatoly Dobrinin, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986)     

New Moscow: An Exploratory Assessment

An American geographer specializing in Russia examines the unprecedented plan announced in mid-2011 by the country's President Dmitriy Medvedev to expand the territory of Moscow and move government offices to newly annexed areas. The plan aims to increase the land area of the capital by 155 percent, mainly by annexation of a vast tract southwest of the city. The author demonstrates that while "New Moscow" is envisioned as a multi-polar and low-density urban site, the historic core would likely focus on tourism. He discusses the official reasons given for the immense undertaking, the potential problems raised by urban specialists and local media, as well as the results of public opinion polls detailing the attitudes of Muscovites toward the city's proposed transformation.     

The International Lenin School: A Response to Cohen and Morgan

This paper challenges the methods and conclusions of an articleon British students at the International Lenin School by GidonCohen and Kevin Morgan published in a recent issue of TwentiethCentury British History. It questions their model of relationsbetween the Comintern and its national affiliates, and theirassertion of the prominence and total nature of the Lenin Schoolas a control mechanism of the former over the latter. Afterdemonstrating the inadequacy of their data and methodology,it indicates significant deficiencies and omissions in theirhandling of qualitative evidence relevant to the influence ofthe school on its students. It concludes by showing that theauthors underestimate the scale and duration of the impact ofthe school's graduates upon the apparatus of the Communist Partyof Great Britain.