Since the publication of Alexander Yanov’s 1995 book After Yeltsin: ‘Weimar’ Russia (Moscow: KRUK; New York: Slovo-Word), a number of Yanov’s predictions for the post-Yeltsin period have come true. Above all, during the last years, sections of the Russian elite have adopted a paranoid vision of the outside, above all Western, world which, in the [...]

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Russia could be sliding into dictatorship as Germany did soon after World war I, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has warned.
“There is a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic,” Mr Ilves told Russia’s Moscow Times newspaper.
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There were still many Germans who were skeptical of Hitler when he became chancellor in 1933. But Führer propaganda and military success soon turned him into an idol. The adulation helped make the Third Reich catastrophe possible. By Ian Kershaw more…

Photo Gallery: Documenting the Hitler Cult
Photo Gallery: Hitler’s Path to Power
Jan. 30, 1933: The Story [...]

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Contemporary Russia is remarkably similar to post-World war I Germany. Both countries emerged from imperial collapse and regime change and experienced massive economic hardship and political chaos. Their populations felt humiliated and their imperial identities were battered, and they responded by blaming their enemies, former colonies, disloyal minorities — and democracy. Both countries turned to [...]

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These findings are consistent with other polling data placing the popularity of the president and Congress at the lowest levels recorded in modern times. Presidential approval has fallen to levels not seen since the Watergate scandal, while the Gallup Poll finds 18 percent approval of the Congress and 76 percent disapproval. The disaffection with political [...]

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There is a nasty smell of Weimar in Russia nowadays. All the talk is of Russia’s need to reassert itself and show the world it is still a great power. On the streets, skinheads and racists beat up foreigners and attack dark-skinned Caucasians. Gays are attacked, liberals jeered and opposition protests forcibly disbanded. At home [...]

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Seven years ago, the economist Brigitte Granville and I published an article in the Journal of Economic History titled “Weimar on the Volga,” in which we argued that the experience of 1990s Russia bore many resemblances to the experience of 1920s Germany.
No historical analogy is exact, needless to say. Russia’s currency did not collapse as [...]

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Since the publication of Alexander Yanov’s 1995 book After Yeltsin: ‘Weimar’ Russia (Moscow: KRUK; New York: Slovo-Word), a number of Yanov’s predictions for the post-Yeltsin period have come true. Above all, during the last years, sections of the Russian elite have adopted a paranoid vision of the outside, above all Western, world which, in the [...]

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By Niall Ferguson
(Filed: 01/01/2005)
Link to this Article
In 1997, I published an academic article - co-written with the Russian economic expert Brigitte Granville - entitled Weimar Germany and Contemporary Russia. I can still remember being teased by one of my brightest undergraduates - himself a German - that this was excessively pessimistic, at a time when [...]

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