Larisa Alexandrovna

Larisa Alexandrovna (born December 7, 1971 in Odessa, Ukraine) is a journalist, essayist, poet. She has served as the Managing Editor of Investigative News of Raw Story for the last three years, and contributes opinion and columns to online publications such as Alternet. She is also an American blogger Huffington Post and for her own journalism blog, at-Largely. Alexandrovna has had her work references in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Newsweek among others.

Trivia

• Part of the Neo-Modernist movement, Alexandrovna uses her patronymic as her pen name instead of her surname. Alexandrovna claims to have gotten an F on purpose in her college Existentialism class, in "protest of having to be tested on angst."[1]

Background

Alexandrovna was born in the Soviet Union to Jewish parents Aleksander Yurovich, a physicist, and Klavdia Borisovna, and accountant, where Jews were discriminated against by the state. She has written of her childhood that even as a child, she was able to understand that her family was treated differently:

"What I was given was not what one would call edible or even in a class of food-like products. Again I did not tell my parents, because again I feared something terrible would happen should they react. I was six and I knew this. But my continued weight loss had my mother so concerned that she began selling off the little she had in jewelry in order to bribe my school officials to feed me, with food, the same food, served the same way, as the other children.

Most Americans, especially white Americans, would never understand this and have no clue what racism, anti-Semitism, and hate are and what damage real hate can do. They faint in public when someone makes a slur but say nothing about US prisons populated with minorities." Mirror Mirror - The Passion of Hypocrites

The family came to the United States after traveling an "entire year maneuvering our way throughout Europe in the common trajectory of Soviet refugees at the time."[2]

Alexandrovna attended Cleveland State University where she majored in English and Creative Writing. It was during this time that she was the poetry editor for the Cleveland Review and worked with Russian poet Zoya Folkova to translate her work into English. She also developed a lifelong friendship with her writing mentor, Dr. Alberta Turner:

"Larisa formed a life long friendship with Alberta Turner, who taught at Oberlin College as well as CSU, and who is truly a "great soul." Larisa has also developed a life-long reading love affair with Nabokov, Marquez, Allende, Gogol, Akhmatova, and Tennesse Willimas, to name a few."[3]

Alexandrovna has said that she spent time working for a local Russian newspaper in Cleveland, covering local news and culture. In the mid 1990's, she moved to New York to work at Nasdaq, which she has said was a bad decision.[4]

Writing career

Larisa Alexandrovna initially published only poetry and short fiction. During the 2000 election, she has said that she formally began to write opinion and news pieces. She first became recognized for her reporting after she wrote an investigative piece about election fraud in Ohio [5], which was later cited in What went wrong in Ohio, a report published by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) and since has been cited in several prominent articles, including in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial Rolling Stone article, Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Later articles on election fraud and domestic politics [6], included covering the Real ID Act [7], did not gain much attention domestically. But it was a series of articles on the pre-war intelligence on Iraq and alleged illegal activities of the US Department of Defense that gained international readers and gained Alexandrovna respect as an investigative journalist.

Iraq War

• "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"
• "Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"
• "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
• "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq..."
• "Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"
• "American (Ledeen) who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"
• "Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk (Feith) stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"

Articles on Iran

• "Outed CIA officer (Plame) was working on Iran..."
• "On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group"

Plamegate

• "Cheney aide cooperating with CIA outing probe, sources say"
• "Second Cheney aide cooperating in leak probe, those close to case say"
• "Bolton's chief of staff gave information on outed agent to Libby, lawyers involved in leak case say"
• "National Security Adviser was Woodward's source, attorneys say"
• "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
• "Rove said cooperating in CIA leak inquiry"
• Associated Press plagiarizes Larisa's work
• Social Security "fright mail" targeting seniors helped fund GOP leader's trips to UK, Asia, shared byline John Byrne,2/28/05

Notes

^ Conyers Letter to FBI, US House Judiciary

^ Was the 2004 Election Stolen?, Rolling Stone

^ Questions surface regarding legitimacy of Baker-Carter election reform commission, Raw Story

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External links

• The Raw Story: Larisa Alexandrova staff profile
• Larisa Alexandrovna's Blog, Huffington Post
• Alexandrovna on The Weekend Interview Show, December 10, 2005.
• Alexandrovna on Voices of Our World, April 2006.
• Alexandrovna on Ian Masters, April 2006.
• Heyoka Magazine Interview on poetry