Home › Features › Responses › American Oligarchs

American Oligarchs

By Katrina vanden Heuvel
September/October 2008
Article Summary and Author Biography

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher, The Nation.

Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

Replying to Padma Desai's letter ("Putin's Russia," May/June 2008), Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss assert that, like the Yeltsin-era media bosses, the United States' "oligarchs . . . own" many media outlets, including The Nation. In reality, The Nation -- the United States' oldest continuously published weekly -- has operated at a loss during all but a few of its 143 years and has been kept alive by its subscribers, advertisers, and many loyal supporters. Moreover, The Nation's equally long-standing antioligarchic positions are known to virtually everyone familiar with the American press.

Related

Essay, Fall 1984
Nuclear Weapons and the U.S.S.R: The Public Mood
Daniel Yankelovich and John Doble

Presidential campaigns do more than choose individuals for high office: our history shows many instances where elections have moved the country closer to a decisive resolution of long-standing issues. The 1984 presidential campaign gives the candidates a historic opportunity to build public support for reducing the risk of nuclear war. The American electorate is now psychologically prepared to take a giant step toward real arms reductions.

Read
Essay, Jan 1965
A Balance Sheet of Soviet Foreign Aid
Marshall I. Goldman

Amid the various anniversaries of the last year, one seems to have passed unnoticed. It was just ten years ago that the Soviet Union embarked on its program of economic aid to neutralist countries. Beginning with a grain elevator and highway program in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the Bhilai Steel Mill in India, Soviet promises of aid mounted rapidly until they reached a peak of more than $1 billion in the year 1960. In terms of gross national product, this was as much as the United States was providing at the time. Subsequently, however, in late 1961, promises of Soviet aid diminished and remained insignificant until late 1963.

Read
Essay, Jul 1969
The East Reaches for Markets
Marshall I. Goldman

Heretofore, Western observers of economic reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have concentrated almost exclusively on internal changes. Most of us have been fascinated by the provocative debate and by the subsequent decision of the East European governments to emphasize such concepts as profit, interest, rent and managerial autonomy and to deëmphasize centralized planning. This concentration on internal economic reforms has tended to divert attention from the equally significant changes that the East Europeans have introduced into their international economic structure.

Read