Central Asia appears a highly fertile region for producing inflated imaginaries aimed at both domestic and external actors. Since the 1990s and more openly even since 2011, official Washington ...embraced the evocative and romantic concept of the Silk Road in formulating US policy for Central Asia. This article uses the critical geopolitics approach to understand US foreign policy assumptions and projections about post-Soviet Central Asia and its broader environment. I argue that the US version of the Silk Road can be interpreted as a geopolitical imaginary, in the same vein as Russia's Eurasian narrative. I first situate the discussion by briefly exploring the many uses of the Silk Road allegory by external actors and Russia's rival terminology of Eurasia. Then, I move to analyzing the birth and framing of the US Silk Road narrative, its administrative and policy locus. Finally, I investigate its elusive geopolitics, and its role as a vehicle for the US selective projection of what Central Asia is and should be.
This book, by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, explores the complex nature of Russian nationalism. It examines nationalism as a multilayered and multifaceted repertoire displayed by a ...myriad of actors. It considers nationalism as various concepts and ideas emphasizing Russia’s distinctive national character, based on the country’s geography, history, Orthodoxy, and Soviet technological advances. It analyzes the ideologies of Russia’s ultra-nationalist and far-right groups, explores the use of nationalism in the conflict with Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, and discusses how Putin’s political opponents, including Alexei Navalny, make use of nationalism. Overall the book provides a rich analysis of a key force which is profoundly affecting political and societal developments both inside Russia and beyond.
At a time when urbanization represents a major trend in human history and when the majority of the world’s population lives in an urban environment, the urban regime theory, developed by Clarence ...Stone in the 1980s, offers an insightful framework for discussing how urban stakeholders are compelled to work together to achieve their goals. While research on urban regimes has historically focused mainly on democratic contexts, this article argues that it is time to use urban regime theory in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian countries in order to better understand how urban politics develop. With growing urban activism and huge territorial contrasts, Russia offers a good case study for testing the notion of “urban regime.” This article focuses on three cities in Russia’s Far North—Murmansk, Norilsk, and Yakutsk—that face common sustainability challenges in Arctic or subarctic conditions; it delves into the mechanisms of their urban regimes and categorizes them by type: instrumental, organic, and symbolic.
À une époque où l’urbanisation représente une tendance majeure de l’histoire humaine et où la majorité de la population mondiale vit en milieu urbain, la théorie du régime urbain élaborée par Clarence Stone dans les années 1980 présente un cadre de discussion intéressant sur la façon dont les intervenants urbains sont incités à travailler ensemble pour atteindre leurs objectifs. Depuis longtemps, bien que la recherche sur les régimes urbains se concentre principalement sur les contextes démocratiques, le présent article soutient que le moment est venu d’utiliser la théorie du régime urbain dans les pays autoritaires ou semi-autoritaires afin de mieux comprendre comment se développe la politique urbaine. En raison de l’activisme urbain croissant et des énormes contrastes territoriaux, la Russie constitue une bonne étude de cas pour mettre à l’épreuve la notion de « régime urbain ». Cet article porte sur trois villes du grand nord de la Russie, Murmansk, Norilsk et Yakutsk, aux prises avec des défis communs en matière de durabilité dans des conditions arctiques ou subarctiques. Il explore les mécanismes de leurs régimes urbains et les place dans des catégories selon les types suivants : instrumental, organique et symbolique.
In 2018, Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, was the most popular of all Russian historical figures of the twentieth century; the fame of White officers such as Alexander Kolchak and Anton Denikin was ...also on the rise. Obviously, broad sympathy for the last Romanov does not imply support for a potential restoration of the monarchy, yet the past few years have seen the activation of several monarchist lobbies, especially around the Russian Orthodox Church and in some well-connected Kremlin circles that seek the ideological hardening of the Putin regime. In this article, I use the case study of the monarchist idea to explore how the Kremlin manages the production of a large and diversified set of ideologies. I explore how the relationship between state authorities, ideological entrepreneurs, and some societal actors such as the Church is articulated along a continuum of permanent complementarity and competition in the production of ideologies.
The 2014 Arctic Human Development Report identified “Arctic settlements, cities, and communities” as one of the main gaps in knowledge of the region. This article looks at circumpolar urbanisation ...trends. It dissociates three historical waves of Arctic urbanisation: from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century (the “colonial” wave), from the 1920s to the 1980s in the specific case of the Soviet urbanisation of the Arctic (the “Soviet” wave), and from the 1960s−70s to the present as a circumpolar trend (the “globalized” wave). It then discusses the three drivers of the latest urbanisation wave (resources, militarisation, and public services) and the prospects for Arctic cities’ sustainability in the near future.
Some Western pundits have embraced a "domino" logic to suggest that Kazakhstan might share the fate of Ukraine, with its Russian minority being used as the pretext for Russian intervention and ...irredentism. In this article I explore several reasons that invalidate this simplistic and mechanical parallel. Russia's policy toward Kazakhstan aims at remaining the main political and cultural yardstick for the whole of Kazakhstani society, not merely the protector of Russian minorities. Perceived historical and demographic similarities between Kazakhstan and Ukraine are narrower than it seems at first glance. Defining a potential "Kazakh Novorossiya" is not an easy task, even for Russian nationalists. Moreover, current demographic and economic trends do not favor Kazakhstan's Russian-majority regions, and local political activism and grievances have remained limited since Crimea's annexation.
This essay defines three categories of Russian nationalist actors: nonstate actors, whose agenda is anti-Putin; parastate actors, who have their own ideological niche, not always in tune with the ...presidential administration’s narrative, but who operate under the state umbrella; and state actors, in particular, the presidential administration. In the future, the Russian ethnonationalism embodied by nonstate actors is the main trend that could pose a serious threat to the regime. However, the Kremlin is not “frozen” in terms of ideology, and its flexibility allows it to adapt to evolving situations. One of the most plausible scenarios is the rise of a figure inside the establishment who would be able to prevent the polarization of Russian nationalism into an antiregime narrative and could co-opt some of its slogans and leaders, in order to gradually channel the official narrative toward a more state-controlled nationalism.
This article examines the challenges and complexities in the efforts by political activist Alexei Navalny to reconcile "nationalist" and "liberal" modes of thinking in the current Russian ...environment. After deciphering three major axes of Navalny's narratives on the national question, the author then discusses the social and political context within which the national-democratic (Natsdem) movement was forged. Natsdems, who are simultaneously pro-European and democratic but also xenophobic, and who target an audience among the urban middle classes, reflect a fundamental shift in Russian society. The last part of the article discusses the paradoxes of Navalny's trajectory, in which a failed theoretical articulation between "nationalism," "democracy," and "liberalism" nonetheless has translated into a political success.
Abstract
How to cope with the end of utopia? How to move from making history on a day-to-day basis to capitalizing on a legend? That is the dilemma Russian veterans of the Donbas insurgency have ...faced since the exalting atmosphere of Novorossiya faded away. In this article, I trace the transformations of the Novorossiya utopia from the point at which Russian volunteer fighters began to return to Russia and found themselves compelled to reinvent themselves in a new context. I first look at the difficult reconversion from war to politics of Donbas heroes such as Igor Strelkov and Aleksandr Borodai and how their efforts to launch new structures based on their war legitimacy have succeeded or failed. I then turn to investigate the birth of new heroes, such as the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who wave the metaphorical flag of Donbas at a time when exaltation of the war has declined. After that, I explore how Novorossiya has become a literature genre that occupies the shelves of Russian bookstores, spanning from
Novorossievedenie
—the “science of Novorossiya”—to the rich subgenre of war memoirs and veteran diaries.
In Kyrgyzstan, nationalism combines a narrative on the titular ethnic group and its relation to a civic, state-based, identity, feelings of imperiled sovereignty, and a rising electorate agenda for ...political forces. Nationalism has therefore become the engine of an interpretative framework for Kyrgyzstan’s failures and enables the society indirectly to formulate its perception of threat, both on the Uzbek and Kyrgyz sides. To this end, this article first analyzes the double identity narrative, civic and ethnic, of Akayev’s regime, followed by the transformation toward a more ethno-centered Kyrgyz patriotism under Bakiyev, the growing role of the theme of imperiled sovereignty—which culminated with the events in Osh—and how nationalism is today becoming a key element of the political agenda and the public scene.
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