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Crises in the Post‐Soviet Space
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 461

Crises in the Post‐Soviet Space

The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the creation of new states and territorial conflicts of different levels of intensity. Scrutinising the post‐Soviet period, this volume offers explanations for both the frequency and the intensity of crises in the region. This book argues that the societies which emerged in the post-Soviet space share characteristic features, and that the instability and conflict-prone nature of the Soviet Union’s successor states can be explained by analysing the post-independence history of the region and linking it to the emergence of overlapping economic, political and violent crises (called 'Intersecting Crises Phenomena’). Transformation itself is shown to b...

Decentralization and Multilevel Elections in Ukraine
  • Language: en

Decentralization and Multilevel Elections in Ukraine

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2022
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  • Publisher: Unknown

None

Constructing the Limits of Europe
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 498

Constructing the Limits of Europe

This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging d...

The Accommodation of Regional and Ethno-cultural Diversity in Ukraine
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 287

The Accommodation of Regional and Ethno-cultural Diversity in Ukraine

The book offers new insights into how ethnicity, language and regional-local identity interact within the context of Ukrainian political reform, and indicates how these reforms affect social cohesion among ethno-cultural groups. While the individual chapters each focus on one or a few facets of the overall research question, together they draw a nuanced picture of the multifaceted challenges to creating and consolidating social cohesion in a nationalizing state. The concept integrates various disciplines, including political science, international relations, law, and sociology. Correspondingly, the contributions are based on various methodological approaches, ranging from legal analysis over media discourse analysis, individual and focus group interviews to analysis of data from a representative population survey. The findings of the in-depth study are discussed within the broader context of comparative research on diversity management and social cohesion in fragmented societies.

The Years of Great Silence
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 300

The Years of Great Silence

This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war. J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.

How Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies Sustain Hybrid Regimes
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 408

How Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies Sustain Hybrid Regimes

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.

The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 390

The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against—what it perceives as—Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against—and sometimes preferences for—modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 438

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands

Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive ar...

Putin's Predicament
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 231

Putin's Predicament

Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongman-image projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US. After a first deep crisis of legitimacy manifested itself by the massive protests in 2011–2012, the annexation of Crimea led to a lengthy boost in Putin’s popularity fi...

The Russian Project of Eurasian Integration
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 227

The Russian Project of Eurasian Integration

Modern trends in geopolitics have raised serious questions about the future global and regional architecture of the world system. In the case of the Eurasian Economic Union, these questions bring up important issues for debate: What is the Eurasian Economic Union? What theoretical concepts could be applied for modern Eurasian integration? Why is the Eurasian Economic Union forming? Most importantly, what prospects does this Union have in the framework of the modern geopolitical situation? This book explores the process of Eurasian integration in the modern global world. The creation of the Eurasian Economic Union has become a topical issue in modern Russian foreign policy. Neo-Eurasianist id...