Andrey Piontkovsky

Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky (, born 30 June 1940) is a Russian-Georgian scientist and political writer and analyst, a member of International PEN Club. He is a former member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council.

Biography Mathematics career He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics. Piontkovsky is a member of the American Mathematical Society. Early in his career he wrote on the terminal control problem, and nonstationary nonlinear systems. Later papers were devoted to the mathematical modelling of strategic stability in the Cold War dual opponent system.

Polemical career In his article published on 11 January 2000 in Sovetskaya Rossiya and placed on the Yabloko website on the same day, was the first to use the term "putinism" which he had defined as "the highest and final stage of bandit capitalism in Russia, the stage where, as one half-forgotten classic said, the bourgeoisie throws the flag of the democratic freedoms and the human rights overboard; and also as a war, "consolidation" of the nation on the ground of hatred against some ethnic group, attack on freedom of speech and information brainwashing, isolation from the outside world and further economic degradation". In the same article, Piontkovsky stated that putinism is the terminal shot to the head of Russia, and also he compared Yeltsin to Hindenburg who in 1932 gave Hitler power over Germany.

Piontkovsky was an executive director of the Strategic Studies Center (Moscow) think tank that has been closed since 2006. He contributed regularly to Novaya Gazeta, The Moscow Times, The Russia Journal and the online journals Grani.ru and Transitions Online. He is also a regular political commentator for the BBC World Service and Radio Liberty in Moscow. He was an outspoken critic of Putin's "managed" democracy in Russia and, as such, has described Russia as a "soft totalitarian regime" and "hybrid fascism."

Piontkovsky is the author of several books on the Putin presidency in Russia, including his most recent book, Another Look Into Putin's Soul.

Piontkovsky is one of the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin manifesto "Putin Must Go", published on 10 March 2010. In his subsequent articles he has repeatedly stressed its importance and urged citizens to sign it.

On 26 June 2013, Piontkovsky commented the case of Edward Snowden by saying, "If Pushkov dares to draw a parallel between Snowden and Soviet dissidents, I must respond that none of them had anything to do with Soviet special services and none of them pledged not to betray state and departmental secrets."

Piontkovsky compared the Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin in 2014 to Hitler's speech on Sudetenland in 1939. He described Putin as using "the same arguments and vision of history" and beyond that, that this speech played a key role in starting the war in Donbas.

In 2016 he published an article "Бомба, готовая взорваться" ("A bomb that is ready to explode") about Russian-Chechen ethnic conflict. When the General Prosecutor Office found his article "extremist" and started criminal prosecution Piontkovsky at last left Russia on 19 February 2016.

2014 condemnation of fascism Piontkovsky adduces Igor Girkin's name among those of like-minded persons and says, "The authentic high-principled Hitlerites, true Aryans Dugin, Prokhanov, , Kholmogorov, Girkin, Prilepin are a marginalized minority in Russia." Piontkovsky adds, "Putin has stolen the ideology of the Russian Reich from the domestic Hitlerites, he has preventively burned them down, using their help to do so, hundreds of their most active supporters in the furnace of the Ukrainian Vendée."

Exile in America In an interview published on 11 February 2022 Piontkovsky argues that the ideology of Rashism is in many ways similar to German fascism (Nazism), while in an interview published on 11 August 2021 he opines that the speeches and policies of Putin are similar to the ideas of Hitler.

Piontkovsky has written extensively on political affairs for the Jamestown Foundation, the Kyiv Post, and Project Syndicate. His byline includes mention that he is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Some works In English

In Russian

His articles in The Jamestown Foundation His articles in Project Syndicate The Law of the Nerd, English translation from grani.ru His articles in grani.ru (Russian) Putin's Russia as a Revisionist Power

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