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Why do similar postcommunist states respond differently to refugees? Why do some states privilege certain refugee groups, while other states do not? This book presents a theory to account for this puzzle, and it centers on the role of the politics of nation-building and of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A key finding of the book is that when the boundaries of a nation are contested (and thus there is no consensus on which group should receive preferential treatment in state policies), a political space for a receptive and nondiscriminatory refugee policy opens up. The book speaks to the broader questions of how nationalism matters after communism and under what conditions and through what mechanisms international actors can influence domestic polices. The analysis is based on extensive primary research the author conducted in four languages in the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
The contributors to this collection explore the multidimensional transformation of independent Ukraine and deal with her politics, society, private sector, identity, arts, religions, media, and democracy. Each chapter reflects the up-to-date research in its sub-discipline, is styled for use in seminars, and includes a bibliography as well as a recommended reading list. These studies illustrate the deep changes, yet, at the same time, staggering continuity in Ukraine’s post-Soviet development as well as various counter-reactions to it. All nine chapters are jointly written by two co-authors, one Ukrainian and one Western, who respond here to recent needs in international higher education. T...
The National Bolshevik Party, founded in the mid-1990s by Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, began as an attempt to combine radically different ideologies. In the years that followed, Limonov, Dugin, and the movements they led underwent dramatic shifts. The two leaders eventually became political adversaries, with Dugin and his organizations strongly supporting Putin’s regime while Limonov and his groups became part of the liberal opposition. To illuminate the role of these right-wing ideas in contemporary Russian society, Fabrizio Fenghi examines the public pronouncements and aesthetics of this influential movement. He analyzes a diverse range of media, including novels, art exhibitions, performances, seminars, punk rock concerts, and even protest actions. His interviews with key figures reveal an attempt to create an alternative intellectual class, or a “counter-intelligensia.” This volume shows how certain forms of art can transform into political action through the creation of new languages, institutions, and modes of collective participation.
An examination of post-Soviet society through ethnic, religious, and linguistic criteria, this volume turns what is typically anthropological subject matter into the basis of politics, sociology, and history. Ten chapters cover such diverse subjects as Ukrainian language revival, Tatar language revival, nationalist separatism and assimilation in Russia, religious pluralism in Russia and in Ukraine, mobilization against Chinese immigration, and even the politics of mapmaking. A few of these chapters are principally historical, connecting tsarist and Soviet constructions to today's systems and struggles. The introduction by Dominique Arel sets out the project in terms of new scholarly approaches to identity, and the conclusion by Blair A. Ruble draws out political and social implications that challenge citizens and policy makers. Rebounding Identities is based on a series of workshops held at the Kennan Institute in 2002 and 2003.
Using a multi-method ethnographic approach, Why Control Immigration? argues that the scarcity of legal labour and the ensuing growth of illegal immigration can act as a patronage resource for bureaucratic and regional elites in Russia.
With the unrelenting unrest in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan, the plight of refugees has become an increasingly discussed topic in international relations. Why do we have refugees? When did the refugee 'problem' emerge? How can the refugee ever be reconciled with an international system that rests on sovereignty? Looking at three key periods - the inter-war period, the Cold War and the present day - Emma Haddad demonstrates how a specific image has defined the refugee since the international states system arose in its modern form and that refugees have thus been qualitatively the same over the course of history. This historical and normative approach suggests new ways to understand refugees and to formulate responses to them. By examining the issue from an international society perspective, this book highlights how refugees are an inevitable, if unanticipated, result of erecting political borders.
The first English-language book to document the men who emerged from the gulags to become Russia's much-feared crime class: the vory v zakone Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western readers can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone, a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment. The vory--as the Russian mafia is also known--was born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves' code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti's captivating study details the vory's journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia's free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.
Taking as its starting point the ethnogenesis of this ethnic group during the Mongol period (13th century), this volume traces their history through Islam, the Ottoman and the Russian Empires (15th and 17th century). The author discusses how Islam, Russian colonial policies and indigenous national movements shaped the collective identity of this victimized ethnic group. Part two deals with the role of forced migration during the Russian colonial period, Soviet nation-building policies and ethnic cleansing in shaping this people's modern national identity. This work therefore also has wider applications for those dealing with the construction of diasporic identities. Taking a comparative approach, it traces the formation of Crimean Tatar diasporas in the Ottoman Balkans, Republican Turkey, and Soviet Central Asia (from 1944). A theme which emerges through the work is the gradual construction of the Crimea as a national homeland by its indigenous Tatar population. It ends with a discussion of the post-Soviet repatriation of the Crimean Tatars to their Russified homeland and the social and identity problems involved.
From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in the Russian empire became a political tool, a devotional exercise, a means of education, and a literary genre. It defined who was Orthodox, and who was 'other.' First encouraging Russian subjects to participate in confession to improve them and to integrate them into a reforming Church and State, authorities then turned to confession to integrate converts of other nationalities. But the sacrament was not only something that state and religious authorities sought to impose on an unwilling populace. Confes...
Leaders of hybrid regimes in pursuit of political domination and material gain instrumentalize both hidden forms of corruption and public anti-corruption policies. Corruption is pursued for different purposes including cooperation with strategic partners and exclusion of opponents. Presidents use anti-corruption policies to legitimize and institutionalize political domination. Corrupt practices and anti-corruption policies become two sides of the same coin and are exercised to maintain an uneven political playing field. This study combines empirical analysis and social constructivism for an investigation into the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005), Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010), and Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014). Explorative expert interviews, press surveys, content analysis of presidential speeches, as well as critical assessment of anti-corruption legislation are used for comparison and process tracing of the utilization of corruption under three Ukrainian presidents.