WORLD
February 24, 2012 | By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times
In a short but fiery presidential campaign speech, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday called on voters to prepare for battle to protect the country's future. Government opponents and foreign influences are threatening to weaken Russia, Putin told tens of thousands of people at a rally in Moscow held on Defender of the Fatherland Day, a national holiday known as Red Army Day during the Soviet era. "We won't allow anybody to interfere with our internal affairs and we won't allow anybody to impose his will on us because we have a will of our own!"
ENTERTAINMENT
February 19, 2012 | By Suzanne Muchnic, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Remember perestroika? It's back — in an exhibition of political poster art. "Deconstructing Perestroika: Soviet Ideology and its Discontents," at the Craft and Folk Art Museum through May 6, offers 24 original versions of posters neatly lined up on walls. But the hard-hitting images are unruly blasts from the Soviet past. Mostly made from 1987 to 1991, they reflect the period when Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)
ENTERTAINMENT
February 20, 2011 | By Martin Rubin, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Molotov's Magic Lantern Travels in Russian History Rachel Polonsky Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 390 pp. $28 To say that Rachel Polonsky is a lifelong Russophile probably still understates the level of her engagement with the country that has so captured her imagination, heart and soul. This British journalist has written about its culture and experienced its realities, first when it was synonymous with the Soviet behemoth and then in the two decades of its more recent transformation.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 10, 2010 | By Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times
The more than 300-year-old Torah survived the Holocaust, was later rescued from a deserted Jewish temple in Prague and eventually wound up at a Northridge synagogue. On Sunday, Temple Ahavat Shalom will hold a ceremony to mark the beginning of its restoration. Because of its fragile state, and its age ? scrolls this old are a rarity in the United States, scribes say ? the Torah is exhibited during holidays and services but is seldom used for learning. Temple Ahavat will begin restoring the Scriptures so they can be fully utilized.
WORLD
July 24, 2010
Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Saturday he had met with Russian spies swapped in an exchange with the United States earlier this month, and promised them a bright future in Russia. "I have no doubts they will have interesting, bright lives," Putin, a former KGB agent, told reporters during a working visit to Ukraine. Ten people pleaded guilty this month to being agents for Russia while living undercover in the United States in one of the biggest spy scandals since the Cold War. They were deported to Russia, which in turn agreed to release four people imprisoned for suspected contact with Western intelligence agencies.
WORLD
July 16, 2010 | By Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times
Russia's most feared counterintelligence service took on even wider powers under a law approved Friday in parliament, and critics warned that the country was sliding back toward Soviet-era repressions. The FSB, a modern-day successor to the Soviet KGB, will now have the authority to issue warnings to people who have broken no laws but are viewed as potential criminals. Rights monitors have criticized the law as a throwback to the times when Russians lived in fear of state persecution for appearing ideologically objectionable.