Polina Barskova, a talented Russian poet ( living in the States) writes about a new Russian turn to the literature and archives of Leningrad blockade.

In the Russian city of Tver', a presentation of a roman-a-clef A Conspiracy of Apes (Khodorkovsky is supposed to be the real referent of the book) was canceled, after a phone call to the regional library from the regional ministry of culture, reports openspace.ru. The publisher is a Czech VT-World Communication Agency. Print run is just 3,000. The author, Tina Shamrai, is listed as a resident of Tver', but that name is supposed to be a pseudonym.

On Feb. 4, there was a break in into the office of Cyril Tuschi, director of a film about Khodorkovsky. The film is about to premier at the Berlin festival. The film itself was not taken, but all additional materials were deleted from Tuschi's computer. (Reported by openspace.ru,
based on information from the livejournal blog of Irina Yasina, a member of the Presidential commission on human rights).

Meanwhile, the artist Andrey Loskutov is to be prosecuted for offending a cop in Novosibirsk.

Sergej Samburov, a grandson of the Russian founding father of space rocketry, is suing the state for his grandfather's archive, reports Russian business site, marker.ru

Feb. 8, 2011. Paul Amar at Jadaliyya:
"...as if America’s puny $1.5 billion in aid (which all must be recycled back as purchases from US military suppliers anyway) really dictates policy for a regime that makes multi-billion dollar deals with Russia, China and Brazil every month, and that has channeled an estimated $40-70 billion into Mubarak’s personal accounts".
Amar's Feb. 1 post is very informative on the emerging configurations of power in Egypt.

A politically motivated attack on intellectuals in Hungary. If Agnes Heller was not involved,
this probably would not have made as much of a splash outside of Hungary.
Some prehistory.
And some more developments.
A fact to be aware of: in Hungary, various scholarly institutes are bureaucratically subordinated to a mandarin Academy.
Names: József Pálinkás (senile authoritarian, Orban's stooge); György Gábor (an honest philosopher of religions at the Philosophy institute); János Boros (a provincial outsider, Palinkas' man); M. István Fehér (right-wing philosopher).
The disgusting thing is that, with all its anti-Communist talk, and the very excessive veneration of Hungarian suffering during Soviet era, Orban's program, under the guise of pragmatism, is reproducing the worst features of a, o well, police state.

More on Egypt. A friend forwarded me this interview with Gilbert Achcar. Some high points.

...most of the Egyptian opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, have been sowing illusions about the army and its purported “neutrality,” if not “benevolence.”

The model they aspire to reproduce in Egypt is that of Turkey, where the democratization process was controlled by the military with the army remaining a key pillar of the political system.

The regime conceded a lot to <Muslim Brotherhood> in the socio-cultural sphere, increasing Islamic censorship in the cultural field being but one example.

Rached Ghannouchi's Tunisian Nahda movement "has much less influence in Tunisia than the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt" because"the Tunisian society is less prone than the Egyptian to religious fundamentalist ideas, due to its higher degree of Westernization and education, and the country's history."

Here's Joshua Stacher at Foreign Affairs about the army:
The regime remained cohesive throughout by pursuing a sophisticated strategy of unleashing violence upon the people and then saving them from it. Sophisticated!? Stacher's pessimism, when combined with such placid neutrality of language, is a questionable proposition.
He mentions two Egyptian activists, who drew attention to Mubarak's (or is it already Soleiman's?) game: Hossam el-Hamalawy and Mahmoud Salem.
Interestingly, he says that those who met Soleiman on Sunday broke ranks with the protesters.. He may have something there.