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The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church
In recent years, the Russian Orthodox Church has become a more prominent part of post-Soviet Russia. A number of assumptions exist regarding the Church’s relationship with the Russian state: that the Church has always been dominated by Russia’s secular elites; that the clerics have not sufficiently fought this domination and occasionally failed to act in the Church’s best interest; and that the Church was turned into a Soviet institution during the twentieth century. This book challenges these assumptions. It demonstrates that church-state relations in post-communist Russia can be seen in a much more differentiated way, and that the church is not subservient, very much having its own a...
The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, 2008-2012
The term "tandem" was used to describe the Putin-Medvedev combination which ruled Russia from 2008 to 2012, when Medvedev was president and Putin prime minister. Many people saw Putin as the real wielder of power, with Medvedev as his puppet. Others, however, saw Medvedev as a visionary, someone who envisioned large scale schemes - even though these schemes have not yet come to fruition. At the same time, many in the West regarded Medvedev favourably, and gave him credit for raising expectations among both the elite and the middle classes in Russia in such a way as to make it difficult for the Russian state to return to its old ways. This book presents a comprehensive survey of the Medvedev presidency, covering all areas including politics, the economy, international relations and social developments. The author concludes that it is still too early to assess Medvedev's achievements definitively.
The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Law
This volume tells the story of the interaction between Christianity and law-historically and today, in the traditional heartlands of Christianity and around the globe. Sixty new chapters by leading scholars provide authoritative and accessible accounts of foundational Christian teachings on law and legal thought over the past two millennia; the current interaction and contestation of law and Christianity on all continents; how Christianity shaped and was shaped by core public, private, penal, and procedural laws; various old and new forms of Christian canon law, natural law theory, and religious freedom norms; Christian teachings on fundamental principles of law and legal order; and Christia...
Believing in Russia
As unease mounts over Russia's direction under Presidents Putin and Medvedev, how free are her faith communities? Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with religious and state representatives across Russia, this book explores religious policy as both a gauge of Kremlin commitment to democratic values and a reflection of national identity.
Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime
Much has been written to try to understand the ideological characteristics of the current Russian government, as well as what is happening inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Refusing pundits' clichés that depict the Russian regime as either a cynical kleptocracy or the product of Putin's grand Machiavellian designs, Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime offers a critical genealogy of ideology in Russia today. Marlene Laruelle provides an innovative, multi-method analysis of the Russian regime's ideological production process and the ways it is operationalized in both domestic and foreign policies. Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime reclaims the study of ideology as an unavoidable component of the tools we use to render the world intelligible and represents a significant contribution to the scholarly debate on the interaction between ideas and policy decisions. By placing the current Russian regime into a broader context of different strains of strategic culture, ideological interest groups, and intellectual history, this book gives readers key insights into how the Russo-Ukrainian War became possible and the role ideology played in enabling it.
Power and Legitimacy
This book sheds new light on the continuing debate within political thought as to what constitutes power, and what distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate power. It does so by considering the experience of Russia, a polity where experiences of the legitimacy of power and the collapse of power offer a contrast to Western experiences on which most political theory, formulated in the West, is based. The book considers power in a range of contexts - philosophy and discourse; the rule of law and its importance for economic development; the use of culture and religion as means to legitimate power; and liberalism and the reasons for its weakness in Russia. The book concludes by arguing that the Russian experience provides a useful lens through which ideas of power and legitimacy can be re-evaluated and re-interpreted, and through which the idea of "the West" as the ideal model can be questioned.
The Transition to National Armies in the Former Soviet Republics, 1988-2005
This book looks at the militaries of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the end of the Soviet era, it recognises that the successor states did not spring from nowhere, but inherited a legacy that influenced all that followed. The book discusses how politicians control the instruments that are the manifestation of the state’s monopoly on violence, and how society views and supports the military. By taking a bottom up empirical approach that examines the personnel, leaders, organisations and institutions, and their outlook and attitudes, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the armed forces, showing how the armed forces are very significantly shaped by the surrounding political and social environment. The book goes on to examine the armed forces in action, and highlights that to truly understand the militaries, studies need to go beyond looking at the static structures.
Life in Post-communist Eastern Europe After EU Membership
This book examines how membership of the European Union has affected life in the ten former communist countries of Eastern Europe that are now members of the European Union. For each country, political, economic and social changes are described and discussed, together with people's perceptions of the effects of EU membership. Overall, the book shows how the benefits of EU membership have differed between different countries, and how perceptions about the benefits also differ and have changed over time.
The Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Culture of Europe
The end of communism in Europe has tended to be discussed mainly in the context of political science and history. This book, in contrast, assesses the cultural consequences for Europe of the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the book examines the new narratives about national, individual and European identities that have emerged in literature, theatre and other cultural media, investigates the impact of the re-unification of the continent on the mental landscape of Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, and explores the new borders in the form of divisive nationalism that have reappeared since the disappearance of the Iron Curtain.
Demystifying the Sacred
Demystifying the Sacred: Blasphemy and Violence from the French Revolution to Today offers a much-needed analysis of a subject that historians have largely ignored, yet that has considerable relevance for today’s world: the powerful connection that exists between offences against the sacred and different forms of violence. Drawing on cases from revolutionary France to the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the international authors probe the nature and agency of local blasphemy accusations, the historical and legal framework in which they were expressed and the violence, both physical and symbolic, accompanying them. In doing so, the volume reveals how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, were a companion to or acted as a trigger for physical action but also a form of how violence was experienced. More generally, it shows the importance of religious sensibilities in modern society and the violent potential contained in criticism or ridicule of the sacred and secular alike.
