In Russian politics reliable information is scarce, formal relations are of relatively little significance, and things are seldom what they seem. Applying an original theory of political language to ...narratives taken from interviews with 34 of Russia's leading political figures, Michael Urban explores the ways in which political actors construct themselves with words. By tracing individual narratives back to the discourses available to speakers, he identifies what can and cannot be intelligibly said within the bounds of the country's political culture, and then documents how elites rely on the personal elements of political discourse at the expense of those addressed to the political community. Urban shows that this discursive orientation is congruent with social relations prevailing in Russia and helps to account for the fact that, despite two revolutions proclaiming democracy in the last century, Russia remains an authoritarian state.
Like other majority Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union, the republic of Dagestan, on Russia's southern frontier, has become contested territory in a hegemonic competition between Moscow and ...resurgent Islam. In this authoritative book the leading experts on Dagestan provide a path breaking study of this volatile state far from the world's gaze. The largest and most populous of the North Caucasian republics, bordered on the west by Chechnya and on the east by the Caspian Sea, Dagastan is almost completely mountainous. With no majority nationality, the republic developed a distinctive system of calibrated power relations among ethnic groups and with Moscow, a system that has been undermined by the spillover of the wars in Chechnya, Wahhabi and Islamist recruiting efforts targeting youth, and Moscow's reassertion of the 'power vertical'. Underdevelopment, high birthrates, transiting pipelines, and the rising incidence of terrorist violence and assassinations add to the explosive potential of the region. Authors Ware and Kisriev combine analysis of the dynamics of domination and resistance, and the distinctive forms of social organization characteristic of mountain societies that may be applicable to other areas such as Afghanistan. They draw on decades of field research, interviews, and data to offer unique perspective on the civilizational collision course under way in the Caucasus today.
Local Heroes Kathryn Stoner-Weiss
2021, 1997, 2021-04-13
eBook
In Local Heroes, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss analyzes a crucial aspect of one of the great dramas of modern times--the reconstitution of the Russian polity and economy after more than seventy years of ...communist rule. This is the first book to look comprehensively and systematically at Russia's democratic transition at the local level. Its goal is to explain why some of the new political institutions in the Russian provinces weathered the monumental changes of the early 1990s better than others. Using newly available economic, political, and sociological data to test various theories of democratization and institutional performance, Stoner-Weiss finds that traditional theories are unable to explain variations in regional government performance in Russia. Local Heroes argues that the legacy of the former economic system influenced the operation of new political institutions in important and often unexpected ways. Past institutional structures, specifically the concentration of the regional economy, promoted the formation of political and economic coalitions within a new proto-democratic institutional framework. These coalitions have had positive effects on governmental performance. For democratic theorists, this may be a surprising conclusion. However, it is possible, as Stoner-Weiss suggests, that the needs of democratic development may be different in the short run than in the long run. The "local heroes" of today may be impediments to the further development of democracy tomorrow. This provocative work, solidly grounded in research and theory, will interest anyone concerned with issues of economic and political transition.
Olonkho , the epic narrative and song tradition of Siberia 's Sakha people, declined to the brink of extinction during the Soviet era. In 2005, UNESCO 's Masterpiece Proclamation sparked a resurgence ...of interest in olonkho by recognizing its important role in humanity 's oral and intangible heritage. Drawing on her ten years living in the Russian North, Robin P. Harris documents how the Sakha have used the Masterpiece program to revive olonkho and strengthen their cultural identity. Harris 's personal relationships with and primary research among Sakha people provide vivid insights into understanding olonkho and the attenuation, revitalization, transformation, and sustainability of the Sakha 's cultural reemergence. Interdisciplinary in scope, Storytelling in Siberia considers the nature of folklore alongside ethnomusicology, anthropology, comparative literature, and cultural studies to shed light on how marginalized peoples are revitalizing their own intangible cultural heritage.
Imperial Russia's Muslims offers an exploration of social and cultural change among the Muslim communities of Central Eurasia from the late eighteenth century through to the outbreak of the First ...World War. Drawing from a wealth of Russian and Turkic sources, Mustafa Tuna surveys the roles of Islam, social networks, state interventions, infrastructural changes and the globalization of European modernity in transforming imperial Russia's oldest Muslim community: the Volga-Ural Muslims. Shifting between local, imperial and transregional frameworks, Tuna reveals how the Russian state sought to manage Muslim communities, the ways in which both the state and Muslim society were transformed by European modernity, and the extent to which the long nineteenth century either fused Russia's Muslims and the tsarist state or drew them apart. The book raises questions about imperial governance, diversity, minorities, and Islamic reform, and in doing so proposes a new theoretical model for the study of imperial situations.
Russia poses a major puzzle for theorists of party development. Whereas virtually every classic work takes political parties to be inevitable and essential to democracy, Russia has been dominated by ...non-partisan politicians ever since communism collapsed. This 2006 book mobilizes fresh public opinion surveys, interviews with leading Russian politicians, careful tracking of multiple campaigns, and analysis of national and regional voting patterns to show why Russia stands out. Russia's historically influenced combination of federalism and super-presidentialism, coupled with a post-communist redistribution of resources to regional political machines and oligarchic financial-industrial groups, produced and sustained powerful party-substitutes that have largely squeezed Russia's real parties out, damaging Russia's democratic development.
Imperial Boundaries is a study of imperial expansion and local transformation on Russia's Don Steppe frontier during the age of Peter the Great. Brian Boeck connects the rivalry of the Russian and ...Ottoman empires in the northern Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who were transformed from an open, democratic, multiethnic, male fraternity dedicated to frontier raiding into a closed, ethnic community devoted to defending and advancing the boundaries of the Russian state. He shows how by promoting border patrol, migration control, bureaucratic regulation of cross-border contacts and deportation of dissidents, Peter I destroyed the world of the old steppe and created a new imperial Cossack order in its place. In examining this transformation, Imperial Boundaries addresses key historical issues of imperial expansion, the delegitimization of non-state violence, the construction of borders, and the encroaching boundaries of state authority in the lives of local communities.
This book critically examines the role of cinema and television in shaping and spreading narratives of memory politics in contemporary Russia to provide a better understanding both of the various ...ways the Russian government practices memory politics, and the existence of alternative and critical voices and criticism.
Russia's Chechen War German, Tracey C.
2003, 20031208, 2003-09-01, 2003-12-08, 20020101
eBook
Widespread media interest into the Chechen conflict reflects an ongoing concern about the evolution of federal Russia. Why did the Russian leadership initiate military action against Chechnya in ...December 1994 but against no other constituent part of the Federation? This study demonstrates that the Russian invasion represented the culmination of a crisis that was perceived to have become an increasing threat not only to the stability of the North Caucasus region, but also to the very foundations of Russian security. It looks closely at the Russian Federation in transition, following the collapse of the communist Soviet Union, and the implications of the 1991 Chechen Declaration of Independence in the context of Russia's democratisation project.
Introduction 1. The Russian Federation Transition 2. Background to the Chechen Declaration of Independence in 1991 3. The Post-Coup Period and the Collapse of the USSR (August-November 1991) 4. The Consolidation of an 'Independent', Post-Soviet Chechnya (1991-93) 5. Challenges to Internal Sovereignty - The Roots of Power and Opposition to the Dudayev Regime (1991-1993) 6. War by Proxy? (February to September 1994) 7. The Decision to Invade (October to December 1994) 8. Making Peace or War? 9. Conclusions: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Glossary Bibliography Index
Tracy German is a graduate in Russian from the University of Edinburgh and was awarded a PhD by the University of Aberdeen on Russia's conflict with Chechnya. She has lived in Russia and Ukraine and also speaks French and German. She is currently a Research Manager at the World Markets Research Centre, specialising in the former Soviet Union and its energy sector.
'This book should not be left to historians or regional experts. Its main value arguably lies in its readable but reliable chronicling, and its restrained but authoritative analysis of processes a decade ago which have a profound impact today, and not just in Russia and Chechnya.' - SEER
The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during ...the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.
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