But as the economist Brad DeLong likes to say, “the Cossacks work for the Czar.” In other words, the blame for misdeeds rests with the top man, who often uses seemingly uncontrollable minions ...

The author’s go bag list Photo by Joan Afton The “running across the rooftops, carrying our things” I’d always heard about was “to escape the Cossacks [ptui!],” not the Nazis.

East Turkestan — or Xinjiang, as it is known in Chinese — is a border region where ethnic minorities are subjected to the Chinese regime’s stifling repression. Subjected to arbitrary arrests and ...