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For a long time Russia’s position as a key global energy player has enhanced Moscow’s international economic and political influence whilst causing concern amongst other states fearful of becoming too dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. The Global Financial Crisis shook this established image of Russia as an indispensable energy superpower, immune to negative external influences and revealed the full extent of Russia’s dependence on oil and gas for economic and political influence. This led to calls from within the country for a new approach where energy resources were no longer regarded wholly as an asset, but also a potential curse resulting in an over reliance on one sector t...
"Federalism, defined generally as a collection of self-governing regions under a central government, is widely viewed as a sensible choice of polity both for emerging democracies and for established states. But while federal institutions are positively correlated with valued economic, democratic, and justice outcomes, ultimately it is unclear how they are connected and which cause which. In Democratic Federalism, Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld explore how federalism works and propose concrete and proven policy guidance on how federalist policies can be designed and implemented successfully. The authors define federalism according to three parameters: how much federal revenue comes through...
In this book, Vladimir Gel’man considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Some countries are governed badly intentionally because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. Gel’man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon. He addresses the issue of causes and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond from a different scholarly optics, which is based on a more general rationale of state-building, polit...
In Search of the Federal Spirit is a major new examination of the theory and practice of federal state formation in the post-Cold War era. It introduces the concept of the federal spirit as a means of exploring the emergence of a range of new political models.
Martin Packard is an extraordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. An idealist and a man of liberal instincts, his enthusiasms resulted in him having an inside track in several major events of recent decades, including the coup and bloody dictatorship in Greece and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Easy going, warm and generous with his friendship, his life story is a ripping read. – Peter Murtagh, journalist and author of The Rape of Greece (Simon & Schuster, London, 1994) His story needed telling. – Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian 1975-1995 This gripping biography is a classic tale of fact being stranger than fiction. Martin Packard was an incurable romantic who thought...
While the potential of agency is most frequently taken to be the power and freedom to act for oneself, for the architectural community this also involves the power and responsibility to act as intermediaries on behalf of others. Presenting current thinking from practitioners and scholars from around the world, this book asks for a more active relationship between the humanities, the architectural profession, and society. Considering issues of architectural research as an agency of transformation, this book explores how humanities research can better contribute towards understanding current architectural needs.
An examination of two influential women writers in the mid-nineteenth century which challenges many common assumptions about the development of the Russian literary tradition
How the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut was designed and reimagined over time In this book, Cathleen Lewis discusses how the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut developed beginning in the 1950s and the ways this icon has been reinterpreted throughout the years and in contemporary Russia. Compiling material and cultural representations of the cosmonaut program, Lewis provides a new perspective on the story of Soviet spaceflight, highlighting how the government has celebrated figures such as Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova through newspapers, radio, parades, monuments, museums, films, and even postage stamps and lapel pins. Lewis’s analysis shows that during the Space Race, Nikit...
This is a collection of John Freedman's reviews and articles, most originally written for the Moscow Times, in which he focuses his expert critical eye on the directors, writers and actors who held centre stage during the 1996-97 theatre season in Moscow. The book looks at the debut of promising new artists and directors at the Moscow Art Theatre celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and offers a wealth of insight into the latest developments in Russian theatre. Freedman illuminates all of the season's noteworthy trends and events in clear, informed and unapologetically opinionated reports. More than just an overview of the stars and highlights, Moscow Performances II observes at close range the playhouses and the people who make up the ever-changing face of contemporary Russian theatre today. This volume is generously illustrated with photographs of featured productions and will be a useful reference for students, professors, writers, directors and actors in the fields of Russian studies, theatre studies, theatre history and contemporary culture.
Over the course of several decades, scientific fact has overtaken science fiction as humankind's understanding of the universe has expanded. Mirroring this development, the cinematic depictions of space exploration over the last century have evolved from whimsical sci-fi fantasies to more fact-based portrayals. This book chronologically examines 75 films that depict voyages into outer space and offers the historical, cultural, and scientific context of each. These films range from Georges Melies' fantastical A Trip to the Moon to speculative science fiction works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, and Contact, and fact-based accounts of actual space missions as depicted in The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, Salyut 7 and First Man. Each film is analyzed not only in terms of its direction, screenplay, and other cinematic aspects but also its scientific and historical accuracy. The works of acclaimed directors, including Fritz Lang, George Pal, Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Wise, Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, Ridley Scott, and Christopher Nolan, are accorded special attention for their memorable contributions to this vital and evolving subgenre of science fiction film.