Frog, water, heat, etc., etc.

The fight is long over here for authority over the security services, the oil business, mass media and pretty much all the levers of government. But now there is concern that the Kremlin is setting its sights on Russian culture.

"They're creating, quickly, a kind of Iran situation, a new-old civilization, an Orthodox civilization," Viktor Yerofeyev, a prominent Russian author, said at his apartment the other evening, from inside the classic thick plume of cigarette smoke that still seems to engulf every Russian intellectual. “The climate has totally changed. What was allowed the day before yesterday now is dangerous. They don’t repress like the Soviets yet, but give them two years, they will find the way."

See also, A Tsar Is Born, featured in the December issue of Harper's, from Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953, published in September by Yale University Press.

Joseph Stalin, to Sergei Eisenstein: You need to depict historical figures correctly. For instance, it's wrong that Ivan the Terrible kisses his wife for so long. In those days, that wasn't allowed. And Ivan the Terrible was very cruel -- you can show that -- but you have to show why it was essential. One of Ivan's mistakes was that he didn't finish off the five major feudal families. If he had wiped them out, there would never have been a Time of Troubles. But he would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God hindered him in this matter. He should have been more decisive.

YUP also offers another excerpt.