The unraveling of Russia's Far Eastern power
I n the early hours of September 1, 1983, a Soviet Su-15 fighter intercepted and shot down a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 after it had flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula. All 269 passengers and crew perished. While the United Statescondemned the act as evident villainyand the Soviet Union upheld the act as frontier defense, the act itselfunderscored the militarystrength Moscow had assembled in its Far Eastern provinces. Even on the remote fringes of its empire, strong and responsive militaryforces stood ready. As has been the case for much of the twentieth century, East Asia respected the Soviet Union and Russia largely because of their militarymight-with the economics and politics of the Russian Far East (RFE) playing important but secondary roles. Hence, the precipitous decline in Russia's Far Eastern forces during the 1990s dealt a serious blow to the country's power and influence in East Asia. At the same time, the regional economy's abilityto support itsmilitaryinfrastructure dwindled. The strikes, blockades, and general lawlessness that have coursed through the RFE caused its foreign and domestic trade to plummet. Even natural resource extraction, still thought to be the region's potential savior, fell victim to bureaucratic, financial, and political obstacles. Worse still, food, heat, and electricityhave become scarce. In the midst of this economic winter, the soldiers and sailors of Russia's once-formidable Far East contingent now languish in their barracks and ports, members of a frozen force.1
АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНАЯ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ О ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯХ НА ДАЛЬНЕМ ВОСТОКЕ РОССИИ В 1990 - НАЧАЛЕ 2000-х гг.
The modern political history of the Russian Far East is poorly covered  in English language historiography. Of the last 30 years,  Western experts subjected to a certain analysis the period of the  1990searly 2000s, when the Russian society underwent rapid  transformations. Their scientific comprehension practically went in  real time, that imposed restrictions on the formulation of problems,  the depth of their analysis, the sources used. The issue of the power  transformation in the Far East is considered mainly within the  framework of the concept of center-peripheral relations. The works  of R. Valliant, F. Chang, S. Davis, and others reveals Moscow's policy  to control the region and tactics of regional leaders  trying to reduce this control. The authors describe such relations in  close connection with the development of federalism in the RF and its “asymmetry”. The publications reflect the evolution of the  regional political elite, the change of types of governors – from  “humanitarians” to “industrialists” and representatives of political  parties, describe the political portraits of the Far Eastern governors,  much attention is paid to the criminalization of power (R. Orttung,  etc.). A special type of regional power is highlighted by experts in  connection with the victory of three “resource oligarchs” in the 2000  gubernatorial elections, including R. Abramovich in Chukotka, that is  estimated in the publications as an “administrative revolution”, the  transition to corporate governance, in which all branches of power in  the region are concentrated in the hands of representatives of a  large resource corporation (N. Thompson, D. Anderson).
A natural language discourse model to explain linear programming models and solutions
Abstract This paper presents a natural language (i.e., English) discourse model to explain a linear programming model and, possibly, its computed solution (which need not be optimal). Drawing from earlier syntactic translations, a semantic model is presented, based on economic input-output relations commonly found in large-scale linear programs. These are then shown how to form rule-driven explanations, which comprises a fundamental component of an intelligent mathematical programming system.