Mikhail Gorbachev voiced his concern about the state of democracy in Russia in his New York Times op-ed, dedicated to the 25-year anniversary of Perestroika:

I knew it. That popular music-channel hip-hop show promoting “a healthy lifestyle” was not for realisies, but was instead a propaganda ploy.

In Moscow, Halloween is celebrated by exactly 4% of Russians and is usually a holiday for going to clubs while dressed in a ridiculous fashion, which is basically a holiday for people who would spend their Saturday nights going to clubs while dressed in a ridiculous fashion anyway.

Tipped off by recent snickering on LiveJournal over Medvedev's photography gallery on the presidential website, we've peaked in for a gander.

While speaking with foreign reporters, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dropped the strongest hint to date that he might be returning as president in 2012. "Me and Dmitry Medvedev (current Russian President - ed), we are of the same kind. We'll sit down and decide who will run for President in 2012," said Putin.

As the economic crisis deepens in Moscow, Kremlin is rolling up its sleeves to likely reshuffle local governments that are sinking further into debt and defaulting on loans and mortgages. Kremlin officials are angered by the misuse of the funds Moscow had allocated to the regions to quell their financial crisis.

2x2 Russian Cartoon television network censored one of the South Park episodes, editing out a scene where an American businessman calls up Vladimir Putin to ask his help in shipping a giant whale to the moon. This time, we see the logic behind the cut.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet head of state, responsible for the most reviled and admired political act of the 80's -- the prohibition -- called on national television for the government to limit production and sales of liquor. Russians are way to drunk, apparently. According to Gorbachev, the nation "is dying out because of alcohol." During the last Soviet years, alcohol production reached the unprecedented levels of 14 liters per person. In 2008, it reached 17 liters (4.5 gallons) per person.

Tomorrow, Mikhail Khodorkovsky will take part in a bizarre online interview. On his fifth birthday spent in prison, he will answer all Gazeta-reader submitted questions - nearly a thousand of them.

Keith Gessen, who was arrested in Sochi today, was released two hours later. Gessen's friend wrote in an email: "I just talked to him and he's fine. He was like "yeah I got arrested no big deal.'"

This afternoon, New Yorker contributor Keith Gessen was detained by OMON (Russian special forces unit) while he was covering the mayoral election in Sochi, the city which will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. According to Gazeta.ru, Russian online newspaper, Gessen was researching a claim by one of the candidates of tempering with the voting ballots.

Early this morning, Moscow-based New York Times correspondent C.J. Chivers was detained by the South Ossetian KGB as he tried to cross into Mogabruni, an Ossetian village on the border with Georgia, which claims its territory.

What do the oligarch owner of the Evening Standard, possible murderer of renegade spy Alexander Litvinenko and a former deputy prime minister of Russia have in common? All three are entering the race to become mayor of a Black sea resort town with total population of 402,000. This town is Sochi and it will host the winter Olympics in 2014.

While America's Santellis and Limbaughs try to create a populist upswell against Obama, the new face of idiotic Russian populism is a young, blond Putin-ite named Maria Sergeyeva. The 24-year-old blogger bounded onto the national stage last January with her fiery speech at a pro-Kremlin rally, telling crowds she was “certain” Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev would “protect” her from the financial crisis. There's nothing particularly novel about her Nashi-esque positions, but when Sergeyeva says the Ukrainian-Russian gas dispute is an American plot, that foreign cars are Trojan Horses, or that the Central Asian immigrants should go home, people listen. Must be her delivery?

Okay, some final thoughts on Friday’s “reset” fiasco in Geneva, where Hillary Clinton’s joke gift for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov bombed due to a translation error. As the entire world has already reported, the secretary of state’s little red button bore the English word “reset” — a reference to comments Joe Biden made a month ago about pushing the “reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations — and what was supposed to be its Russian equivalent transliterated into Latin script. Normally, we would let something so highly covered die its already drawn-out death, but lo, we have an exclusive two cents to get off our chests. Ahem.