It is part of a broader search by the Kremlin for a whole new set of Russian heroes, including figures from the Tsarist past - an attempt, post-communism, to give the country a common identity.

BBC: Russia seeks new generation of 'heroes'

In fact, it is an irony of post-communism that ethnic minorities like the Albanians of Macedonia are expected to act in a totalitarian way by so many western advocates of political pluralism and civil society.

ECONOMIST: Letters

There is plenty here about everyday life in Moscow in the first and most turbulent years of post-communism a period so extraordinary and so hard to comprehend at the time that any addition to the literature is welcome.

ECONOMIST: Modern Russia