Abstract for every article which will be on the exam

Katarzyna Chawrylo: The Russian Orthodox Church vs. the Government in Russia

A great majority of Russians declare that they are members of the Orthodox Church. However, an analysis of social behaviours has proven that religion has no major impact on their lives - a great number of Russian citizens are not familiar with the religious dogmas, do not engage themselves in church rituals and have a liberal approach to following Christian moral principles. Attachment to Orthodoxy in the case of most Russians is of a declarative and passive nature, and usually is not linked to taking any specific actions. On the other hand, Orthodoxy and the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate, which is the largest religious community in Russia, play an essential role in the process of cultural and civil self-identification of the Russian nation. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a socio-political institution with a centuries-old history, which places strong emphasis on the continuity of Russian statehood and enjoys public prestige in Russia, has also been used for political purposes. 2. The ROC's increasing presence in Russia's public life seen over the past few years is to a great extent a result of Russian government policy, which has become more attentive to religion since Vladimir Putin regained the presidency in 2012. To strengthen the political regime in Russia, the Kremlin at that time began to draw extensively upon conservative ideology and promote traditional moral and social values, which the Church is viewed as the guardian of. This has resulted in establishing closer relations between the secular government and the ROC, as well as in a greater engagement of ROC hierarchs and its structures n domestic and foreign policy issues. 3. Relations between the ROC and the government in Russia allude to the Byzantine model of the 'altar and throne alliance'. This co-operation guarantees tangible benefits to both parties: owing to this, the ROC has a privileged position as compared to other churches operating in Russia and has been granted access to various social groups and sources of financing. All this has allowed it to improve its infrastructural and financial potential. In turn, the Kremlin has gained a valuable ideological partner. However, co-operation with a government which demonstrates distrust of any independent public initiatives imposes significant limitations on the ROC activities and does harm to its image to a certain extent. The Church has been unable to reach some of its goals (for example, Orthodox catechisation has not been introduced in schools on a compulsory basis) and to pursue its own policy in various areas, if its goal collides with the Kremlin's policy (for example, 6OSW STUDIES 12/2015 historic policy which clearly condemn the Soviet regime). Furthermore, the ROC's subordination to the Kremlin has been criticised by some of its followers in Russia, above all Christian intelligentsia circles who have identified themselves with the ROC so far, and has exposed it to the risk of reputational damage outside Russia, especially in Ukraine, which this Church sees as part of the international area where it would like to hold supremacy. 4. Given its close links with the government, which have been successively strengthened since the 1990s, the Orthodox Church's autonomy in Russia tends to be narrower. In effect, the Russian public views the ROC as an element of the system of political power, and not as a neutral religious institution. In the longer term, the increasing integration of ROC hierarchs with political establishment will expose the Church to risks related to the potential destabilisation of the political system in Russia. These risks have recently been augmented by economic problems and increasing tension among the general public resulting from the deterioration of the socio- -political situation.

Chapnin: A church of Empire

During Church Revival 1.0, relations with the government were complex. No legal mechanisms existed for cooperation between Church and state. There were no settled procedures for transferring church property to ecclesiastical control, and church educational endeavors were in an unofficial limbo. The government provided money to the Church only on an ad hoc basis. The process of establishing the needed mechanisms was slow and contested. Most state authorities in the 1990s were the same people who had held power during the Soviet era. They were in important ways still pro-Soviet, though in deference to public sentiment, they accommodated the Church. They allowed the Church to establish new seminaries, reopen monasteries, ordain young candidates to the priesthood, develop publishing and media activities free of censorship, and organize pilgrimages within Russia and to the Holy Land, Egypt, and Europe. This phase, which we may call "Church Revival 2.0," continues to this day. Pastoral care has been deemphasized in favor of attention to what the Church can do in partnership with the state. The Church now focuses on the construction and restoration of property, and on the acquisition of state funds for this purpose. In the early 2000s, the Church lobbied successfully for a law returning church property that had been confiscated by the Soviet state. More and more money has been allocated for restoring old properties and constructing new churches and diocesan offices. In 2015, that allocation was about one billion rubles, enough to merit its own line in the state budget. Another ambitious plan has been to build two hundred new churches in Moscow, with the support of the government in Moscow. Meanwhile, the bureaucratization of the Church has gained momentum, with the establishment of new church agencies and an increase in paperwork and in the numbers of officials and staff. Undertaking to shape Russian national identity, the Church promotes patriotism and traditional values in coordination with government propaganda. The *Church has taken on a complex ideological significance over the last decade, not least because of the rise of the concept of Russkiy Mir, or "Russian World." This way of speaking presumes a fraternal coexistence of the Slavic peoples—Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian—in a single "Orthodox Civilization."* It is a powerful archetype. It is an image of unity that appeals to Russians, because it gives them a sense of a larger destiny and supports the imperial vision that increasingly characterizes Russian politics. *The currency of "Russian World" within the Church today indicates that Orthodoxy is becoming a political religion. And so the Church Revival, which in its 1.0 phase sought to revive pre-revolution Christianity, has become Church Revival 2.0, a post-Soviet civil religion providing ideological support for the Russian state. *The Russian Church has become a Church of Empire, with ecclesiastical practices and institutions shaped accordingly. We seem to be at the dawn of a new epoch in Russian Orthodox history, one that in all likelihood will be known as "neo-imperial."

Galeotti: Heavy Metal Diplomacy: Russia's Political Use of its military in Europe since 2014

Since 2014, Russia has mounted an extensive, aggressive, and multi-platform attempt to use its military and the threat of force as instruments of coercive diplomacy, intended to divide, distract, and deter Europe from challenging Russia's activities in its immediate neighbourhood. The main elements are threats of potential military action, wargames which pointedly simulate such operations, the deployment of combat units in ways which also convey a political message, and intrusions close to and into European airspace, waters and even territory. The actual impact of these policies is varied, sometimes counter-productive, and they depend on coordination with other means of diplomacy and influence. But they have nonetheless contributed to a fragmentation of unity within both NATO and the European Union. 'Heavy metal diplomacy' is likely to continue for the immediate future. This requires a sharper sense on the part of the EU and its member states of what is a truly military move and what is political, a refusal to rise to the bait, and yet a display of convincing unity and cross-platform capacity when a response is required. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Be smart: Distinguish between political and military moves. There is no evidence of a Russian intent to initiate outright hostilities with NATO or other European states. NATO members may worry the mutual guarantee of Article 5 may not be firm, but in Moscow it is taken very seriously. Strengthening military defences is a necessity. But it should be understood too that Russia's are essentially political moves and a military counter may well not be the best or only response. Be cool: Sometimes initiative is to be gained by inaction or restraint. The current ritual of Russian move and NATO response gives the Kremlin the initiative; it has learned what triggers a Western response and what it will be. There is a case for being less predictable and more relaxed. Given that there is no likelihood that, say, were a bomber flight not met, that it would launch an attack, it may be sensible to sit back and let Putin burn out his airframes with increasingly pointless provocations. Be strong: When responses are called for they need to demonstrate capacity and unity. Small-scale and ad hoc responses may well be worse than useless, as they convey to Moscow and domestic audiences alike a sense of European helplessness. Especially given that US support cannot be taken for granted, responses should instead demonstrate not just Western unity, but also the very real strengths to be found in Europe, both political and military. Be flexible: Respond to multi-instrument campaigns with the same. None of Russia's coercive diplomatic gambits operate in isolation: the 'combined arms' of threatening rhetoric, military deployments, covert subversion, and media spin work most effectively precisely when they work together. By the same token, European and NATO responses ought not to focus on a single medium - whether scrambling fighters or issuing statements - but work on a similar multi-platform basis. Be together: Reassurance must be balanced with reconsolidation. Just as it is crucial to recognise that Russia's 'heavy metal diplomacy' is a European and NATO challenge, not simply a Baltic, or Nordic, or even north-east European one, so too it is vital to acknowledge the real political divisions on which it seeks to capitalise. There are communities of opinion within European nations which genuinely fail to understand why it is important to, for example, install anti-missile defences, or which fear war more than they fear appeasement, and a recent Pew Research Centre poll found 27 percent of Europeans expressing doubts about NATO, compared with 57 percent in favour. This cannot simply be hand-waved away as the result of ignorance or Russian disinformation, and addressing these doubts is as important a security challenge as increasing defence budgets, and arguably an even more complex one.

Smith, Hanna: Statecraft and Post-Imperial Attractiveness: Eurasian Integration and Russia as a great power

The article explores the effects of the Soviet legacy on efforts to promote regional integration in the post-Soviet space and Russia's approach to integration, based primarily on the example of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It begins with an exploration of the nature of Russia's imperial past and how attitudes deriving from that have affected integration projects. Post-imperial attitudes have both impelled Russia to pursue integration and proved to be an obstacle to achieving it. The relative failure of integration projects has led to a tendency on the part of Russia to use statecraft rather than relying on past imperial connections in the region.At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was widely assumed within Russia that close ties between the newly independent states would continue, with Russia in a dominant position. Some of these ties were to be institutionalized in the forum of the CIS. The integrationists who based their hopes on the CIS were, however, undermined by two immediate factors: differing attitudes among the CIS members, most notably Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk, who saw the CIS as purely a mechanism for handling residual issues concerned with the break-up; and the tendency for both Russia and other states to prefer entering into bilateral arrangements rather than agreeing on a new order through the CIS framework. The possibilities for Russia to exercise statecraft in its immediate neighborhood were strong in the 1990s, except with respect to the Baltic states. The structure of the Soviet economy meant that economic relations with Russia appeared to define the natural future course for the newly independent states, many of which were dependent on Russia for energy. In addition, Russia inherited most of the military hardware and structures of the Soviet Union and was expected to provide broad regional security at a time of instability. Widespread knowledge of Russian as the language of business and politics meant that core elements of "soft power" were already in place, to the advantage of Russia. And yet it appears that many of these advantages were squandered. Among other factors not discussed here were the collapse of the Russian economy, which made it far less attractive as a trading and investment partner, and the erratic behavior of individual Russian (or at least Russian-commanded) military units in disputed territories such as Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia, and Transnistria, weakening Russia's attraction as a security guarantor. Finally, the failure of the Russian military to win a swift and decisive victory in Chechnya after initiating a war there, hard on the heels of an internal conflict between the Russian president and parliament, dispelled a great deal of confidence that other CIS countries might have had in Russian leadership. This assessment did not, however, appear to be shared by Russian elites, who continued to assume that Russia would exercise inevitable hegemony, at least over the Slavic lands and Central Asia. The focus in this article has been on the imperial legacy that informed such attitudes, and which ultimately inhibited Russia from exercising statecraft as effectively as might have been expected. Taking things for granted and underlining Russia's role as the leader of the CIS, as Primakov did, undermined the essence of the CIS as a collective organization and deterred its members from further integration. Vladimir Putin took a more cautious, less fractious approach, and seemed early in his first presidency to be achieving some success. Bobo Lo's comment about reverse Potemkinization, cited above, can be understood in this light; that the less Russia boasted about its leadership of reintegration efforts, the more successful that leadership was. The revival of the CIS did not, however, last long, and it was replaced in Putin's ambitions by a smaller group of states organized in the Eurasian Customs Union, later the Eurasian Economic Union. This article does not follow this story through to the present day, but it can be summarized that the same imperial tendencies resurfaced, largely in the 2000s, through Russian energy policy. The decline in attractiveness coincided, according to a 2013 Valdai Club report based on a series of cross-time surveys, with a decline in the interest of Russia's elites in imagining Russia's sphere of influence beyond its own borders. This change reflected both a generational difference and a steady trend across time (Zimmerman et al. 2013 Zimmerman, William et al. 2013. "Russian Elite - 2020". Moscow: Valdai Club report. [Google Scholar] ). Events in 2014 further weakened Russia's attractiveness, even for those states like Belarus and Kazakhstan that had tried hardest to maintain links after 1991. In pursuing regional integration, Russia has consistently been hampered by residual imperial attitudes that come up against the aspirations of the other newly independent states. This is not to say that Russia is itself imperialist, or that it has failed altogether in exercising statecraft in its near abroad. As others have shown, Russia continues to maintain a high degree of attraction in a number of areas. The EEU, although its precise nature is still being debated by different members, has been expanding and bears witness to the attractiveness of Russia. Now that earlier efforts to integrate Russia more closely with the West and broader international organizations are in tatters as a result of the Ukraine crisis, it is likely that statecraft among the former Soviet states will continue to be a priority; but the risk remains that Great Power attitudes based on the Soviet experience will interfere with these efforts in the future.

Klein, Margarete: Russa's mIlitary: on the rise?

After the 2008 war with Georgia, Russia started its most radical and comprehensive military reform in several decades. It is aimed at transforming the outdated mass mobilization army into combat-ready armed forces that are able to pursue a broader set of functions — from nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence to conventional warfare in local and regional conflicts to non-linear warfare to combating terrorism. The results are mixed. On the one hand, Russia was successful in streamlining command and control structures, improving training, increasing the number of professional soldiers, and strengthening elite forces. Moscow consequently enhanced its capability for joint operations, inter-agency coordination, and strategic mobility. Furthermore, Russia made progress in modernizing weapons and equipment. On the other hand, structural problems still set limits to Russia's military development. They consist of the inability of the defense industry to deliver the requested amount and quality of modern weapons in due time and to agreed cost, demographic problems, and — most notably — insufficient financial means against the background of declining oil prices and the effects of Western sanctions. Despite these impediments, Russia's operations in Ukraine and Syria clearly demonstrate that its armed forces are able to fulfill an increased set of functions even with limited means. Particularly in regard to its post-Soviet neighbours, Russia can rely on its vast arsenal that, although stemming from Soviet times, can still be used in combat operations. The intervention in Syria shows that Moscow is able to quickly deploy troops and hardware beyond the post-Soviet space and pursue limited expediationary warfare based on air power. While Russia still lags behind NATO in quantitative and qualitative terms, it enhanced its military capabilities on its western frontiers and can benefit from asymmetric strategies, quick decision-making processes, and strategic surprise. NATO should react with a double strategy. The Atlantic Alliance has to improve credible military reassurance for its Eastern members, and NATO should promote confidence-building measures to avoid unintended military confrontation and maintain chances for cooperation with Russia in areas where the interests of both sides overlap.

Laine, Veera: State-led nationalism in Today's Russia: Uniting the people with Conservative Values?

In recent years, the Russian state has been described as becoming "more nationalistic". In the time period encompassing the Sochi Winter Olympics, the occupation of Crimea, the war in Donbas that continues to this day, air strikes in Syria, and the state seeking new legitimacy during the deepening economic crisis in Russia, many notions have been connected to growing nationalism. But nationalism as such is an ambiguous concept. Moreover, there is hardly any state in today's global system that could be said to be totally devoid of nationalistic argumentation. Therefore, the way in which the Russian state leadership is using nationalism in order to achieve its political goals requires a critical empirical study. Authoritarianism, conservatism, and even imperialism have been discussed as "new" features of the Russian state. But the change in the self-understanding of the Russian state is not a result of one factor, such as strengthening national pride, but rather a wide range of ideas that have been reshuffled in relation to each other. This Working Paper focuses on the state-led nationalism in this changing ideational environment between the years 2012 and 2016, and how it has been received by the people. To this end, the Working Paper will argue that the ethnic-civic dimensions are insufficient in themselves to explain the nature of the contemporary state-led nationalism in Russia, as the official discourse both blurs these boundaries and creates new ones. President Vladimir Putin's language simultaneously seeks acceptance by the majority of the people and control over embodiments of ethnic nationalisms. Hence, the state-led nationalism today leans on the narratives of a nation that has a history of a multinational country where ethnic Russians are still "first among equals". For a long time, the Russian state has been shaping nationalism by portraying an image of a united nation, held together by commonly shared culture, history, language and values. These common denominators have remained the same, but the emphasis has varied. Today, the cultural unity of Russians extends beyond the state's geographical and political borders, and the shared values are defined from above in a more restricted manner. *The official discourse aims at distinguishing the Russian nation from other nations, but also at framing the right ways to be Russian: morals and patriotism are prerequisites for belonging to the nation. The conclusion of this paper is that despite being ethnically inclusive at the level of discourse, the contemporary Russian nationalism produced by the state leadership is exclusive in its demand for conservative, traditional values.*

Kotkin, Stephan: Russia's Perpetual Geopolitics: Putin Returns to the Historical Pattern

Peter the Great's victory over Charles XII and a declining Sweden in the early 1700's, which implanted Russian power on the Baltic Sea and in Europe; Alexander i's victory over a wildly overstretched Napoleon in the second decade of the nineteenth century, which brought Russia to Paris as an arbiter of great-power affairs; and Stalin's victory over the maniacal gambler Adolf Hitler in the 1940's, which gained Russia Berlin, a satellite empire in Eastern Europe, and a central role shaping the global postwar order. To be sure, the contraction measured in purchasing power parity has been far less dramatic. Throughout, the country has been haunted by its relative backwardness, particularly in the military and industrial spheres. **This has led to repeated frenzies of government activity designed to help the country catch up, with a familiar cycle of coercive state-led industrial growth followed by stagnation.** Most analysts had assumed that this pattern had ended for good in the 1990s, with the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism and the arrival of competitive elections and a buccaneer capitalist economy. But the impetus behind Russian grand strategy had not changed. And over the last decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin has returned to the trend of relying on the state to manage the gulf between Russia and the more powerful West. conclusion: someday, Russia's leaders may come to terms with the glaring limits of standing up to the West and seeking to dominate Eurasia. Until then, Russia will remain not another necessary crusade to be won but a problem to be managed.∂

Shushkevich: Demokratizatsiya Belavezha Forest Viskuli

Politically active youth, through their personal convictions, have set an example for more fruitful and wider associations than the CIS. The Commonwealth has considerable potential for social support. Already on June 21, 1994, in Minsk, there was a congress of the Party of CIS Supporters, created by an initiative group of students and graduates of the philosophy section of the History Department of Belarusan University, under the coordination of Sergei Shilov. The goal was to support the geopolitical development of the Commonwealth on the basis of the principles of European liberal federalism, drawing on the experience of the British Commonwealth of Nations and the European Union and to establish a CIS Consultative Center in Minsk with the support of non-governmental organizations.

Allison, Roy: Russian 'deniable' intervention in Ukraine: how and why Russia broke the rules

Russia's annexation of Crimea and attempts to further dismember the Ukrainian state pose a challenge for Russian neighbours and potentially for the wider European security order of a greater magnitude than anything since the end of the Cold War. To reinforce the principles which underpin European security, given all the controversy over Kosovo and other conflicts, it is essential to assess and refute unjustified Russian legal claims which seek to deflect attention from Moscow's use of force and seizure of territory. Otherwise Russia may be ready to stake out a wider legal/normative challenge to western states beyond the clashes in spring and summer 2014. It is also essential to achieve a much better understanding of the determinants of Russian policies in the Ukraine crisis. Practitioners as well as scholars need to draw on an explanatory framework that includes, but goes beyond, reliance on geopolitical categories and structural power, otherwise the current spiral of antagonisms between western and Russian leaders could intensify and have long-term profound consequences. Comparing the underlying explanations of Russian conduct in the crisis also helps us judge whether the emphasis on de-escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and on stabilization could deliver a temporary peace but maintain a track to further dangerous crises ahead. This article offers a multifaceted analysis of Russian intervention in Ukraine, but focuses on the persuasiveness of Russian legal claims and on alternative, but overlapping, explanations of Russian conduct.

Natalya Kosmarskaya: Russia and Post-Soviet "Russian Diaspora": Contrasting Visions, Conflicting Projects

Russia's attitudes toward millions of Russophones in the Newly Independent states (NIS) have been noted, since 1991, for their ambivalence. The concept of a "Russian diaspora" has been pursued as an ethno-selective ideological project. On the practical-political level, however, Russian authorities were obliged to rest upon a loose notion of "compatriots." In this article, "virtual diasporization" is juxtaposed with Russophones' identities and behavior to substantiate the point that these populations do not possess the "diasporic" features ascribed to them. Moreover, official Russian policies have failed to evoke any "diasporic" sentiment within Russophones toward their putative "homeland." *I argue that, to be more realistic and responsive, these policies should be more sensitive to commonalities and zones of common interest between Russophones and the titular populations of the NIS.*

Martikainen and Vihma: Dividing the EU with Energy? Unpacking Russia's Energy Geoeconomics

Russia's economic ideology is increasingly based on its national security interests instead of modernisation or free trade. Russia's use of its energy resources as a means of enhancing its strategic influence in its neighbourhood and the EU can be analysed as energy geoeconomics. Russia's current crisis mode, internal mobilisation and confrontation with the West emphasise the tendency for strategic and geoeconomic goals to take precedence over commercial interests. In this view, what matters most is not the profitability of energy projects, but rather their usefulness in achieving geostrategic goals and securing the regime's power and interests domestically. With the Nord Stream II gas pipeline project, Russia can portray the EU as weak and disunited. More precisely, the project weakens Germany's solidarity within the EU ranks, and creates a substantial policy incoherence for Brussels vis-à-vis the Ukraine crisis by undermining Ukraine's status as a transit state. The Fennovoima nuclear power project in Finland demonstrates how the geoeconomic operation, in which political ends are tied to economic ones, 'trickles down' to countries on the receiving end of large-scale energy projects with Russia. Many constituencies within the EU are well aware of Russia's 'wedge strategy'. However, several actors always see economic interdependence as a positive sum, which makes them vulnerable to strategic dependencies.* The EU and the member states should recognise Russia's strategic behaviour in the energy sector, counter it firmly, and thereby also create space for genuine commercial cooperation.*

Ferrari: Putin's Russia: Really Back?

The Ukrainian crisis did not only produce a deep and enduring rift in the relations between Russia and the West; it also led to a phase of considerable difficulty for Moscow with several postSoviet republics, even with those most interested in the perspective of economic and political re-composition. Many observers believe that the Ukrainian crisis resulted in a substantial and perhaps final setback to the Russian project of Eurasian Union. Is it really so? Or, from another point of view, did the loss of Ukraine make it even more necessary for Russia to realize the Eurasian project? 1. - Despite Russia's economic instability, the West should not underestimate Moscow's prowess on the global scene 2.Time is ripe to acknowledge that Moscow has legitimate interests in the European economic, political and security structures and policies 3.Overcoming reciprocal lack of trust: a cornerstone in a new West-Russia collaboration 4. The growing militarization of the political conflict in Eastern Europe should be de-escalated 5. The West and the Russia-led Eurasian project: any prejudice is to be avoided 6.The risk of a closer cooperation between Moscow and Beijing should not be underestimated

FP Contributors: The Soviet Union is gone, but it's Still collapsing

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of 15 new countries in December 1991 remade the world overnight. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation disappeared, and democracy and free-markets spread across the now defeated Soviet empire. Of course, 25 years later, events didn't exactly unfold as initially predicted. The forces of globalization have mutated former Soviet countries in unseen ways, emboldening autocrats and entrenching corruption across the region. Meanwhile, the geopolitical animosities of the Cold War are resurgent, with relations between Moscow and Washington at their lowest point since the Soviet-era arms race. The creation of new countries, meanwhile, has given rise to nationalism and autocracies that are shaping foreign-policy decisions and altering societies in unforeseen ways. Yet, the significance of this quarter-century of change is still not fully understood. Why did the Soviet Union really collapse and what lessons have policymakers missed? How is history repeating itself across the lands of the former superpower? In search of answers, Foreign Policy asked six experts with intimate knowledge of the region from their time in finance, academia, journalism, and policymaking. Here are the unlearned lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Smith, Jeremy: Non-Russians in the Soviet Union and after

The constitutional structure of the Soviet Union and many elements of the early policies remained largely unchanged until 1991. The nineteenth century was the high-point of nation-building in Western Europe, and in Eastern Europe minorities began to articulate national demands. The Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 marked, for many national leaders, the end of any hope of autonomy or federalism within a democratic Russian state. In the 1960s and 1970s, a flourishing Ukrainian culture circulated in the form of samizdat underground publications, and in 1970 a nationalist journal, Ukrainian Herald, appeared secretly for the first time. Most non-Russians enjoyed a relatively privileged position in their republics, could use their mother tongue at school and in public and had controlled access to their national cultures. *For many non-Russians, the introduction of market-style economic reforms led to particular hardship as it meant that relatively underdeveloped regions such as Central Asia and the Caucasus could no longer rely on unconditional central investment.*

Karen Smith Stegen, Julia Kusznir: Outcomes and strategies in the "new Great Game": China and the Caspian States emerge as winners

The decades-long struggle for control over oil and natural gas resources, infrastructure and influence in the Caspian region has been referred to as the 'New Great Game', with Europe, China, the US and Russia typically cited as the main combatants. We explore recent developments and aver that, if present trends continue, Europe will have access to Azerbaijan's resources, China to those of the East Caspian states, the US will stay commercially and strategically engaged, and Russia's influence will (continue to) diminish. How did this unexpected turn of events arise? We examine China's dominance and* argue that the foreign policies of the US and Russia - within the region and even further abroad - have inadvertently driven the East Caspian states and China towards each other*. Wary of potential maritime chokepoints in the Pacific, China feels strongly compelled to shore up resources and influence in the Caspian region. In part because of Russia's intransigence regarding the Caspian Sea's status, the East Caspian states - faced with constrained access to the West - have turned to China as an alternative market and counterbalance to Russia.

Kappeler: Ukraine and Russia: Legacies of the imperial past and competing memories

The legacy of the tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union is one of the crucial factors for an understanding and an explanation of current affairs in the post-Soviet space. This is especially true for Ukraine and for Russian-Ukrainian relations. Russia regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit, while many Ukrainians want to liberate themselves from the Russian hegemony and advocate a closer cooperation with the European Union. This controversy culminated in late 2013, when Russian pressure led to a re-orientation of Ukrainian policy and a rapprochement with Russia. In this paper I present some reflections on the significance of the imperial heritage for the Russian-Ukrainian relationship. I analyse the different discourses and the Ukrainian and Russian historical narratives, politics of history and competing memories. The Russian-Ukrainian relationship was and is still characterized by an obvious asymmetry, a hegemony of Russia over Ukraine. Russia uses the Orthodox Church and the traditional dominance of the Russian language as instruments for its policy. Not only Russian historians, but also politicians and even the Russian President try to impose the imperial narrative on Ukraine. They are supported by a significant part of Ukrainians, who adhere to the ideal of a common Russia-led Orthodox East Slavic world. Other Ukrainian historians and politicians use the Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian historical narrative with its national myths of liberty and of Ukraine's closeness to Europe in their struggle against the Russian hegemony. The on-going "War of memories" is of special interest. Both sides use and abuse history as a political weapon, and the controversies about the heritage of Kievan Rus', the interpretation of Mazepa, the Holodomor and WW II are not only academic, but also political issues. They reflect the struggle over the geopolitical and cultural orientation of Ukraine which is of crucial importance for the future development of the post-Soviet space and of Eastern Europe.

Graham Smith: Transnational politics and the politics of the Russian diaspora

This article sketches out a conceptual framework for exploring the diasporic politics of the Russians in the post-Soviet borderlands. Specific consideration is given to the Russians within Estonia and Latvia, the only two postSoviet states not to grant automatic citizenship to all those resident within their sovereign spaces in 1991. The essay not only examines the Russians in relation to the homeland regimes or nationalizing states in which they are located but also looks at the role of transnational political actors- specifically, the state patron (Russia) and Western transnational political institutions (notably the OSCE)- in shaping diasporic politics. *It is argued that by examining the relationships among 'the ethnic patron', 'the West' and 'nationalizing state', we are better placed to understand the ways in which the differing representations of homeland by the Russian minorities themselves are being reconstituted as part of a diverse and unravelling community of identity politics, limited political opportunities and survival strategies.*

Oxana Shevel: Russian Nation-building from Yel'tsin to Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic or Purposefully Ambiguous?

This article surveys nation-building efforts in post-Soviet Russia. There have been five main nation-building projects reflecting the dominant ways of imagining the 'true' Russian nation but each has been fraught with contradictions and therefore have been unable to easily guide state policies. At the same time, a solution to the Russian nation-building dilemma may be emerging. This solution does not resolve the contradictions associated with each of the nation-building agendas but instead legalises the ambiguous definition of the nation's boundaries in the 1999 law on compatriots and the 2010 amendments to it. *The fuzzy definition of compatriots in the law allows Russia to pursue a variety of objectives and to target a variety of groups without solving the contradictions of existing nation-building discourses.*

Gorenburg, Dmitry: Great Promise Unfulfilled how Russia lost its way after independence

This paper reviews the most important events in Russian history since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It focuses on general trends in Russian development as the country underwent a triple transition to democracy, market economy, and federal state. At first, Russia hoped to quickly become part of the world community and to join the ranks of the fully developed market economies. *The failure of market reforms through at least 1998 to improve living standards among the vast majority of the population, the rapid increase in crime and corruption in the country, and the waning (decreasing) of Russian influence in world affairs all combined to create a climate of disillusionment with the post-communist transition.*

Zevelev, Russian National Identity and Foreign Policy

This report analyzes how *Russia's domestic discourses on national identity—including beliefs about the self and the world, as well as interpretations of historic legacies—influence foreign policy and why this impact became particularly strong in the 2012-2016 period*. It traces the role of domestic narratives in shaping international behavior to enhance our understanding of how and when major foreign policy shifts take place.

Kolsto: Beyond Russia, becoming local: trajectories of adaption to the fall of the Soviet Union among ethnic Russians in the former Soviet Republics

When the Soviet Union began to unravel in the late 1980s, many observers expected that the 25 million ethnic Russians who lived in the non-Russian republics represented an important group of people who could be mobilized by 'empire-savers' to stem this process. Russians who would end up as minorities in new nationalizing states, had little if anything to gain from state disintegration. They were also highly resourceful in terms of education and occupational positions. The sinister role which ethnic Serbs played in Slobodan Milosevic's schemes to salvage the Yugoslav state boded ill, as did the bloody war waged by France in Algeria in protection of the pied-noirs in the 1950s. As it turned out, the Russians in the non-Russian republics for the most part remained remarkably passive, and this contributed in no small degree to the tranquil transition to a new political map in Eurasia. This article is an attempt to explain this counterintuitive outcome. I revisit a typology of identity trajectories for the Russian diaspora which I developed in the mid-1990s and conclude that its basic insights remain valid. At that time I had argued that Russians outside the RSFSR had already for some time been going through a process of dissociation from the Russian core group. They were adopting some cultural traits from the local population without undergoing any kind of assimilation. *While there were important regional varieties as well as generational differences within each Russophone community, as a general rule it could be said that they had developed an identity of their own, or more precisely: one local identity for each republic. In this way Russian ethnic solidarity was weakened and the mobilizational potential of the diaspora issue for political purposes was diminished.* Empirical research carried out by myself and others over the last 15 years, including large-scale opinion polls, seem to confirm these assumptions. After the break-up of the unitary state the distance between the identity trajectories of the various Russian-speaking post-Soviet communities have gradually grown wider, for a number of reasons. Those Russians who were least willing or able to adapt to the new political circumstances have in many cases returned to Russia, making it even more important for those who remain to learn the local language and find their cultural-political niche in their country of residence as a national minority.

Bunce and Hozic: Diffusion-proofing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

*This article analyzes the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine as a prime example of autocratic diffusion-proofing*. First, it provides examples to flesh out the relatively new concept of diffusion-proofing. Next, it reviews three bodies of literature--studies of realism, competitive authoritarian regimes and the decision calculus of authoritarian rulers--in order to identify key elements driving the Russian decision to invade Ukraine. Finally, it provides insight into how Russians developed their repertoire of intervention by relating the concept of diffusion-proofing to reputation-proofing. The article concludes by highlighting important implications for future studies of authoritarianism and international aggression.

Ruth Deyermond: The uses of Sovereignty in Twenty-First Century Russian Foreign Policy

Contemporary Russian foreign policy demonstrates a dual approach to state sovereignty, using a Westphalian model of sovereignty outside the former Soviet region and a post-Soviet model inside it. This approach performs three functions in contemporary Russian foreign policy: securing Russian national interests at domestic, regional, and international levels; balancing against the United States; and acting as a marker of 'non-Western' power identity in an emergent multipolar order. The conflict between these two models increasingly appears to threaten the last of these objectives, however, and as a means of advancing foreign policy objectives the approach thus appears caught in a self-defeating logic. Of all the areas of friction between Russia and the United States (and its allies), few are proving to be more significant than the dispute over sovereignty—its meaning and its limits. A radical rethinking of the theory and practice of sovereignty in the post-Cold War world, informed by the liberal political values deriving from the hegemonic influence of the US, and evident in several US-led interventions, has called into question the primacy of state sovereignty in contemporary international relations. Outside the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, Russia has responded by strongly reasserting the principle of state sovereignty as the basis of international law and international relations. At the same time, however, Russia has shown an entirely different approach to state sovereignty within the post-Soviet space. Russia has demonstrated a fundamental disregard for the state sovereignty principle in its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states in 2008 and its incorporation of Crimea in 2014, in both cases despite the opposition of the states (Georgia and Ukraine) in which these regions were located. This clearly contradicts the Russian position on state sovereignty in relation to Iraq, Serbia, Syria, and other cases, which is set out in key policy documents and government statements.11 See, for example, 'Voennaya doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii', The Kremlin, 5 February 2010, available at: http://news.kremlin.ru/ref_notes/461, accessed 16 October 2012; 'Kontseptsiya vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii', The Kremlin, 15 July 2008, available at: http://kremlin.ru/acts/785, accessed 28 August 2014; 'Kontseptsiya vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii', Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 12 February 2013, available at: http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/nsosndoc.nsf/e2f289bea62097f9c325787a0034c255/c32577ca0017434944257b160051bf7f!OpenDocument, accessed 31 July 2013; 'Statement at the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly', Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, 28 September 2012, available at: http://russiaun.ru/en/news/ga_lavrov_67, accessed 22 May 2014. View all notes While this is obviously a significant inconsistency in the Russian view of sovereignty, it would be wrong to assume that this is either a mistake or a recent development. Analysis of key Russian foreign policy documents, statements by Russian government actors, and Russian diplomatic and military activity suggest that although the content of sovereignty varies across cases in Russian foreign policy, any characterisation of the differentiated Russian approach as merely inconsistent and hypocritical misses the core function of sovereignty in Russian foreign policy. Outside the region of the former Soviet Union, a 'Westphalian' state sovereignty model—where mutual recognition of sovereignty by states and acceptance of the principle of legal equality of states are both assumed—is evident in Russian foreign policy.22 This article does not, of course, suggest that 'Westphalian' sovereignty is a concept explicitly adopted in Russian foreign policy discourse; rather, it suggests that the term—widely, if not unproblematically used in Western International Relations theory—describes one of the positions adopted on sovereignty by the Russian government. View all notes Inside it, however, the approach combines the legacy of Soviet ideas about state sovereignty with a discursive adaptation of the 'post-Westphalian' model that has underpinned debates about Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and intervention since the late-1990s.33 The term 'post-Soviet' is used here to refer to all the successor states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) other than the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) which, as members of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU), have political, economic, and security relationships to Russia, the rest of Europe, and other parts of the former Soviet Union, that are radically different from the other Soviet successor states' relationships to these actors. View all notes This article suggests that the principal significance of the idea of sovereignty in Russian foreign policy in the twenty-first century is instrumental, not ideational—in other words, that although ideas about the character of state sovereignty have been set out frequently by members of the Russian political elite in speeches, interviews, and other public forums and appear to be central to the articulation of Russian foreign policy in official documents, their primary purpose is to advance particular elements of Russian foreign policy rather than to develop a consistent position on sovereignty which would inform government practice. As a result, this article also suggests that while Russian government discourse and practice in relation to state sovereignty has not been consistent in its content across time or cases, it has been consistent both in its functions and in its differentiation between states outside and inside the post-Soviet space. It is possible to identify what could be characterised as two working models of sovereignty in Russian foreign policy: a 'Westphalian' and a 'post-Soviet' approach. In both approaches, the point of sovereignty ideas in Russian foreign policy remains the same: to enhance Russian security; to challenge, at both conceptual and practical levels, US primacy and the extension of influence in the post-Soviet region by the US and its 'Western' allies;44 Although problematic in several respects, the term 'West' is used here to refer to the US and its European allies (members of NATO or the EU) because it is a term widely used by the actors themselves, including members of the Russian political elite. View all notes and to enhance Russia's position as both a regional power and a significant power in an emergent multipolar order. This article, then, argues that a dual approach to state sovereignty—Westphalian sovereignty outside the region of the former Soviet Union and a post-Soviet model inside it—performs three functions in contemporary Russian foreign policy: firstly, it helps to secure Russian national interests at domestic, regional, and international levels; secondly, it acts as a form of balancing against the US and its allies, the states Russia most strongly associates with the shift towards a post-Westphalian model of sovereignty; and thirdly, it acts as a marker of 'non-Western' power identity in an emergent multipolar order. Given the variety and strength of domestic and international interests at stake, Russia is unlikely to abandon its use of a dual approach to state sovereignty in the near term, which means that the concept and practice of state sovereignty will continue to be a source of dispute between Russia and the West. However, the conflict between these two models, while effective in advancing the two objectives of national interests and balancing in the short term, is likely to cause significant problems in the longer term for the third objective because of the concerns of other group members, above all China. Since this objective intersects with the others, the friction produced by differences between these two models represents a challenge for Russian foreign policy in the longer term. Thus both the disputes between Russia and the West over sovereignty and the tension between Russia's own working models of sovereignty are likely to remain significant sources of instability and uncertainty in global politics.