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| Author | : Michael L. Bressler |
| Publisher | : Lynne Rienner Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 447 |
| Release | : 2018 |
| Genre | : Russia (Federation) |
| ISBN | : 9781626377110 |
This title provides a thorough introduction to Russia as it confronts the challenges of modern day's interdependent world. Interdisciplinary in design, the book draws on different scholars to provide sophisticated yet accessible treatments of subjects ranging from geography and history to politics and economics.
| Author | : Graeme P. Herd |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 273 |
| Release | : 2022-01-27 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0429537549 |
This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.
| Author | : Neil Robinson |
| Publisher | : John Wiley & Sons |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2019-04-16 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1509525181 |
Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin for a fourth presidential term in 2018 has seen Russian democracy weaken further and Russia’s relations with the West deteriorate seriously. Yet, within Russia, Putin’s position remains unchallenged and his foreign policy battles have received widespread public support. But is Putin as safe as his approval ratings lead us to believe? And how secure is the regime that he heads? In this new book, Neil Robinson places contemporary Russian politics in historical perspective to argue that Putin’s regime has not overcome the problems that underpinned the momentous changes in twentieth-century Russian history when the country veered from tsarism to Soviet rule to post-communist chaos. The first part of the book, outlining why crises have been perennial problems for Russia, is followed by an exploration of contemporary Russian political institutions and policy to show how Putin has stabilised Russian politics. But, while Putin’s achievements as a politician have been considerable in strengthening his personal position, they have not dealt successfully with the enduring problem of the Russian state’s functionality. Like other Russian rulers, Putin has been much better at establishing a political system that supports his rule than he has at building up a state that can deliver material wealth and protection to the Russian people. As a result, Robinson argues, Russia has been and remains vulnerable to political crisis and regime change.
| Author | : Stephen White |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 483 |
| Release | : 2011-03-31 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1139496832 |
A fresh and compelling interpretation of Russian politics by a leading authority, this textbook focuses on political developments in the world's largest country under Putin and Medvedev. Using a wealth of primary sources, it covers economic, social and foreign policy, and the 'system' of politics that has developed in recent years. Opposing arguments are presented and students are encouraged to reach their own judgements on key events and issues such as privatisation and corruption. This textbook tackles timely topics such as gender and inequality issues; organised religion; the economic krizis; and Russia's place in the international community. It uses numerous examples to place this powerful and richly-endowed country in context, with a focus on the place of ordinary people which shows how policy is translated to Russians' everyday lives.
| Author | : Alena V. Ledeneva |
| Publisher | : Cornell University Press |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 2014-01-15 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0801470056 |
During the Soviet era, blat—the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures—was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s—from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. Ledeneva discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations, the media, politicians, and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The "know-how" Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia.
| Author | : Edwin Bacon |
| Publisher | : Springer Nature |
| Total Pages | : 300 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 3031524233 |
| Author | : Oscar Jonsson |
| Publisher | : Georgetown University Press |
| Total Pages | : 200 |
| Release | : 2019-11-01 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1626167346 |
This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. While other books describe current Russian practice, Oscar Jonsson provides the long view to show how Russian military strategic thinking has developed from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. He closely examines Russian primary sources including security doctrines and the writings and statements of Russian military theorists and political elites. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011/12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means. This book provides much needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.
| Author | : Yegor Gaidar |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 354 |
| Release | : 2010-01-01 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0815731159 |
"My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse...." —From the Introduction to Collapse of an Empire The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word—a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the "shock therapy" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: "Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat." Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why so
| Author | : Sarah Henderson |
| Publisher | : Cornell University Press |
| Total Pages | : 260 |
| Release | : 2003 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780801441356 |
Can foreign donors help build new democracies? In the 1990s, public and private organizations such as USAID and the Soros Foundation poured huge amounts of money and expertise into Russia to help build the dream of a vibrant democratic society. Sarah L. Henderson argues that despite the altruistic intentions of foreign assistance agencies and domestic activists, foreign aid designed to spur civic growth has had unintended consequences. Drawing on extensive field work, survey research, and work experience for several funding agencies in Moscow in the late 1990s, Henderson focuses on donor efforts to support the emerging community of nongovernmental organizations and, in particular, on efforts to build a functioning women's movement in Russia. Her intimate knowledge of Russia's growing NGO community informs a worrisome finding: foreign aid has made a tremendous difference, but not in altogether expected or positive ways. New Russian civic groups serve either the needs of an indigenous clientele or the demands of the foreign aid bureaucracy--but rarely both. Henderson's research and experience show that while aid has kept a fledgling civic community alive, it is a civic community that is disconnected from its own domestic audience. The book suggests that large flows of foreign aid have in some ways damaged the long-term prospects for democratization in Russia.
| Author | : Mikhail Suslov |
| Publisher | : BoD – Books on Demand |
| Total Pages | : 302 |
| Release | : 2020-11-02 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 3838213610 |
In his timely book, Mikhail Suslov discusses contemporary Russian geopolitical culture and argues that a better knowledge of geopolitical concepts and fantasies is instrumental for understanding Russia’s policies. Specifically, he analyzes such concepts as “Eurasianism,” “Holy Russia,” “Russian civilization,” “Russia as a continent,” “Novorossia,” and others. He demonstrates that these concepts reached unprecedented ascendance in the Russian public debates, tending to overshadow other political and domestic discussions. Suslov argues that the geopolitical imagination, structured by these concepts, defines the identity of post-Soviet Russia, while this complex of geopolitical representations engages, at the same time, with the broader, international criticism of the Western liberal world order and aligns itself with the conservative defense of cultural authenticity across the globe. Geopolitical ideologies and utopias discussed in the book give the post-Soviet political mainstream the intellectual instruments to think about Russia’s exclusion—imaginary or otherwise—from the processes of a global world which is re-shaping itself after the end of the Cold War; they provide tools to construct the self-perception of Russia as a sovereign great-power, a self-sufficient civilization, and as one of the poles in a multipolar world; and they help to establish the Messianic vision of Russia as the beacon of order, tradition, and morality in a sea of chaos and corruption.
