Bücher der Reihe Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

Ukraine is again-since its annexation of Crimea in February 2014 and the ongoing war in the Donbass-the stage of the largest crisis in Europe since the end of the Cold War. When it comes to understanding the resolution and prevention of complex hybrid conflicts, theories in international relations are trapped in their state-centered perspectives. Meanwhile, the role of the individual actor, alone or organized, often remains underestimated as political and moral agent. In this book, Marc Raphael Dietrich sheds light on a critical yet politically practicable notion of cosmopolitanism which centers on the individual and is framed by a set of universal principles, thus providing valuable alternative insights on the Crimea and Donbas conflict.

Czechoslovakia played an important role within the Soviet bloc, yet its history remains under-researched. This monograph blends historical analysis of the superpowers¿ foreign policies with an assessment of their impact on Czechoslovakia and its position within the Soviet bloc. The book thereby places Czechoslovakia on the map of Cold War history, i.e. the era of ¿mutually assured destruction¿ that lasted almost half a century. It provides a lucid introduction to some milestones in international Cold War history in their relation to Czecho-Slovak history. The book¿s novel contribution is to explain Czechoslovakiäs domestic situation during the Cold War from the ¿outside¿. Drawing on extensive source materials of Slovak, Czech, American, and Russian provenance, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of post-war Czecho-Slovak history while also contributing to general knowledge about the nature and impact of the Cold War.

Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicised in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states in the period from 2004 to 2017. The most notable difference observed between Ukraine, on the one side, and the two Baltic countries, on the other, is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine's internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate the establishment of Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine's government to ukrainianise the public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being 'precarious' and 'vulnerable.' This became especially visible in debates after the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of an introduction of Russian as a second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language segments of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continue to reproduce the image of being 'victims' of their countries' nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians.This book illustrates that-notwithstanding variations between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other-there is an ongoing process of convergence within Ukrainian debates if compared to those held in the other two countries in terms of an increasing degree of 'discursive decommunisation' and 'derussification.'

This volume deals with legal issues concerning Russia's annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas, so-called 'frozen conflicts' and 'hybrid warfare, ' the use of courts and tribunals to address armed aggression, and the implications of recent events for the security guarantees connected to nuclear nonproliferation.

How far have universities in post-Communist states adopted the practices and habits of their branded and consumer-oriented equivalents in the English-speaking world? While not assuming that university education in those states reflects in any mechanistic way the regulated, business-led system long established in places like the US, and now being dramatically realized in countries like Britain, this edited collection identifies some marked shifts in the direction of what might best be described as 'neoliberalisation', examining its particularities in local situations where establishment ideologies were, until the early 1990s, deeply alien to all kinds of commercially driven entities. Many of the authors are concerned not only with the linked issues of commercialism, instrumentalism, bureaucracy, and managerialism, framed locally and nationally, but also with the meaning and purpose of universities outside or against their status as efficient gatherers of income. The collection makes specific reference to Lithuania, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia, and comprises theoretical as well as empirical studies of diverse but connected subjects, including the marketization of the academy, regional reactions to globalization as expressed in the representational rhetoric of specific curricula, the role and place of civic education, comparisons between educational settings, pedagogies for a critical and ethical consciousness, corporate and state demands and their effects on academic freedom, and the positive potential of new communication technologies. In all these cases, the system of neoliberalism, or rather an uneven process of neoliberalisation, forms a backdrop to the particular issues discussed.

Much has been written on the 1917¿1920 revolution in Ukraine, on the national movement, the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks. Yet there were others with a mass following whose role has faded from history books. One such party was the Borotbisty, the heirs of the mass Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, an independent party seeking to achieve national liberation and social emancipation. Though widely known in revolutionary Europe in their day, the Borotbisty were decimated during the Stalinist holocaust in Ukraine. Out of print for over half a century, this lost text by Ivan Maistrenko, the last survivor of the Borotbisty, provides a unique account on this party and its historical role. Part memoir and part history, this is a thought-provoking book which challenges previous approaches to the revolution and shows how events in Ukraine decided the fate not only of the Russian Revolution but the upheavals in Europe at the time.

The protection of minorities in Bulgaria presents a paradox. Although minority protection played a prominent role in the accession of the country to the European Union, hardly any positive minority rights were adopted in post-communist Bulgaria. Apart from the reversal of communist assimilation campaigns, only limited progress has been made in the area of minority protection. Positive minority rights have remained very restricted, some minorities, notably Pomaks and Macedonians, have been denied recognition, and the formal adoption of legislation or policy documents has often not been followed by implementation.By charting minority rights policies in Bulgaria in the period between 1989 and 2004, this study clarifies the main reasons for the limited progress in the post-communist period. While, in contrast to some other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, minority "kin-states" did not play a major role in post-communist Bulgaria, the European Union and the Council of Europe were instrumental in putting minority questions on the agenda of Bulgarian governments. However, their impact was smaller than much of the literature on enlargement and conditionality would suggest. Domestic factors were crucial in shaping minority rights policies in post-communist Bulgaria. Of particular importance was the communist legacy, which acted as a brake on the development of minority rights.

The Russian nationalist idea, considered a marginal tendency in the 1990s, has, during the last years, transformed into an official state and widely popular ideology. The Russian political spectrum is unified in its promotion of a discourse grounded in undisguised anti-Westernism as well as the paranoid view that national unity and authenticity are threatened by various external and internal enemies. The space of political representation has become increasingly covered by nationalism to the point that it is today regarded a "politically correct" attitude in Russia. Nationalist and, in some cases, crypto-fascist factions operate in all major political parties of Russia today.The government actively contributes to promoting this trend through introducing patriotic education at school, revitalizing anti-Americanism as a foreign policy doctrine, new national holidays and commemorations, a growing cult of the military, frequent references to Orthodoxy, utilizing ultra-nationalist groupings in its manipulation of public life through "political technology", and essentializing "ethnic rights" of the national subjects of the Federation. The media has come to play a crucial role in the dissemination of cryptic and, sometimes, manifestly nationalist ideas. The submission of most major mass media outlets to the authorities highlights the "fourth power's" status as a proponent of nationalist discourse in its own right. The media has been playing an increasing role in exacerbating xenophobic tensions within Russian society.This nationalist climate is not restricted to politics and journalism, but is also to be found in numerous sections of cultural and academic life. Thus, in Russia today, apart from various cases of para-science and alternative history, the notion that certain academic disciplines have the mission to justify "Russian specificity" is widespread among scholars, as are approaches, defined as "civilizationist," that systematize national stereotypes. History, sociology, economics, and literature as well as the new disciplines of "culturology" and "geopolitics" propagate ethnocentric precepts with consequences yet to be explored.Contents:Marlène Laruelle, Deliberations on "Russian Nationalism" as a Subject of Academic Research; Galina Zvereva, The Discourse of the State Nation in Contemporary Russia; Viktor Voronkov and Oksana Karpenko, Patriotism as Nationalism of the (Post-)Soviet Man; Andreas Umland, Three Varieties of Post-Soviet Fascism: Conceptual and Contextual Problems of Interpreting Contemporary Russian Ultra-Nationalism; Aleksandr Verkhovskii, The Church's Project of Russian Identity; Dmitrii Dubrovski, Sports and Politics: Soccer as a National Idea in Contemporary Russia; Viktor Shnirelman, The Civilizational Approach as National Idea; Aleksandr Nikulin and Irina Totsuk, The Metahistorical Matrix of Great Power Rent-Seeking: Politico-Economic Peculiarities of the Academic National Idea; Natalia Ivanova, Specificities of the Nationalist Discourse in Contemporary Literary Criticism; Yulia Liderman, The Course towards Patriotism and the Answer of Russian Cinematography after 2000: New Budgets, New Genres, New War Movies; Vera Zvereva, TV Celebration Concerts: The Rhetoric of State Nationalism.

This book represents a collection of the results of four empirical studies of ethnic and religious hate speech in Russia in 2001-2004. Several Russian non-governmental organizations took part in the project. The major part of the research was done by Alexander Verkhovsky and Galina Kozhevnikova (Sova Center). Further contributions were made by Tatyana Lokshina and Sergey Lukashevsky (formerly, Moscow Helsinki Group; now Demos Center) and Ksenya Izotova and Valeriya Akhmetyeva (Sova Center).The contributions analyze and compare with each other dynamics of the development of hate speech according to such parameters as groups that are the objects of intolerance, permutations of hate speech, types of people who voice intolerant views, etc. These phenomena were studied in politically relatively calm periods as well as in times of raising intolerance after the terrorist acts in Moscow 2002 and Beslan in 2004. Special research was devoted to hate speech during the federal electoral campaigns of late 2003 - early 2004. This allows the authors to make some conclusions about the dependence of hate speech on events such as the above.

This book discusses a number of issues concerning the service of the nationalities of the Caucasus in the Red Army within the context of Soviet nationality policies and an intensification of repressive tendencies in the USSR's armed forces during World War II. It is the first study of the role and function of the Caucasian national troops in the Red Army and of related political debates between state and military leaders of the Caucasian national republics and USSR. The political aspects of the mobilization of various Caucasian nationalities in the army, and the reasons for the gradual cessation, in the course of 1941-1943, of the mobilization in the Red Army of all native nationalities of the Northern and Southern Caucasus are analyzed, in particular.The study is based on documents from the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Social and Political History and Russian State War Archive, as well as on various memoirs and secondary sources.

Based on extensive archival research and, in particular, on documents of the Central Committee of the VKP(b), TsIK and SNK of the USSR and RSFSR, VSNKh, NKVD, and other institutions, this book analyses the aims and methods of pre-World War II urban housing policies in the Soviet Union. Among the issues covered are the principles of the Soviet approach to private and communal housing, the role of the state security organs in the administration and distribution of accommodation, different types of early Soviet lodging (communal houses, family flats, Soviet Houses and Hotels, etc.), the reasons for the abandonment of cooperative housing as well as for the restrictions on building private cottages, and the role of housing for enforcing certain types of behaviour and labour desired by the Soviet government. The study, for the first time in Russian language, describes in some detail the so-called New Housing Policy largely ignored in Soviet historiography.