Recent iseees_bps_rw items

“The Language of the Sword”: Alexksandr Bek, The Writers Union and Baurdzhan Momysh-uly in Battle for the memory of Volokolamskoe shosse

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The Great Patriotic War served as a defining moment for the Soviet Union, changing the locus of legitimacy for both regime and individual and also the way that this multi-ethnic state defined itself. The following paper examines the conflict between two men who constructed narratives of this war, first collaboratively, then separately. Both aspired to create an authoritative, authentic version of events. One of these men, Aleksander Bek was a professional writer of Russified Danish origin. The other, Baurdzhan Momysh-uly, was a soldier and a Kazakh, representing a recently modernized, yet “backward” ethnic minority. Their story provides a window into the changing meaning of what it meant to be a Soviet person as well as the battle over who had the rights to tell the story of the war.

Religiosity and Trust in Religious Institutions: Tales from the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia)

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: The paper examines the determinants of trust in religious institutions in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia—three countries with low levels of religiosity as measured by attendance, prayer and fasting, yet high levels of trust in religious institutions. The analysis employs individual-level survey data from the Caucasus Research Resource Centers’ (CRRC) 2007 Data Initiative and uses OLS regression to show that while religious practices do not determine trust in religious institutions, the importance of religion in one’s daily life is a strong indicator of trust in religious institutions in each country. However, the results show some differences between the three countries with regard to two types of control variables—trust in secular institutions and socioeconomic factors. Georgia is the only country in which interpersonal trust is a significant indicator of trust in religious institutions. Residence in the capital is only significant in Azerbaijan. Armenia is the...

The Poet of Fire: Aleksandr Skriabin’s Synaesthetic Symphony “Prometheus” and the Russian Symbolist Poetics of Light

Mon, 3 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This paper discusses the synaesthetically informed metaphors of light, fire, and the Sun in Russian Symbolism and shows their scientific, technological, and cultural resonance in the novel experience of electric light in Russia. The essay studies the harmonic synaesthetics of Aleksandr Skriabin’s symphony “Prometheus, A Poem of Fire”—which also includes an enigmatic musically notated part for an electric organ of lights, along with Symbolist texts concerning light and electricity and the synaesthetic poetry of fire by Skriabin’s close associate Konstantin Bal’mont. The article investigates how Skriabin’s Mystic sonorities and his language of colored lights square with the peculiar Symbolist engagement with scientific notions of electricity and light at the Russian fin de siècle. Thus, it demonstrates the Russian Symbolists’ fascination not only with aesthetic synthesis and mystic transfiguration, but also with the sciences and technology: both with divine light and with electric...

Communism on Trial: The Slansky Affair and Anti-Semitism in Post-WWII Europe

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In 1952, hardly a decade after the Holocaust, Communist Czechoslovakia staged one of the post-WWII era’s most blatant acts of state-sponsored anti-Semitism. The Prague Political Purges put on trial fourteen defendants. Eleven of the fourteen were of Jewish origin. All were found guilty, and eleven of the fourteen were condemned to death. The remaining three were sentenced to life imprisonment. All of the defendants were devoted Communists, having shed any religious, ethnic, or national identity in their pursuit of a socialist utopia. Yet, the trial’s main ideological thrust was anti-Semitism. The Slansky Trial of 1952 came as a sharp blow to Jews across a spectrum of political, religious, and national affiliations. The Purge Trials forced many Jews to reexamine their positions vis-à-vis Zionism, Communism, and the Left as a traditionally popular choice for Jews. The trial held unique significance as Jews sought to redefine what it meant to be Jewish in a post-Holocaust world....

Civic Forum, Public against Violence, and the Struggle for Slovakia

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Standard narratives of 1989 in Czechoslovakia maintain that the revolution brought two civic associations into being: the “Czech” Civic Forum (OF) and the “Slovak” Public against Violence (VPN). Thorough examination of relevant archival and newspaper evidence, however, demonstrates that this belief is mistaken; in the beginning, Slovaks were just as likely to found chapters of Civic Forum as they were to establish branches of Public against Violence. This article documents this initial situation and explains how Public against Violence came to achieve hegemony over the Slovak civic movement. The author argues that this achievement was the result of a struggle between activists in Bratislava and their colleagues elsewhere in Slovakia, where the prize was the power to represent Slovakia. Ultimately, it was a struggle over rival visions of the proper political organization of Slovakia, with crucial implications for the future of Slovakia within the Czecho-Slovak federation.

The Nineteenth-Century Russian Gypsy Choir and the Performance of Otherness

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

As Russia’s nineteenth-century Gypsy craze swept through Moscow and St. Petersburg, Gypsy musicians entertained, dined with, and in some cases married Russian noblemen, bureaucrats, poets, and artists. Because the Gypsies’ extraordinary musical abilities supposedly stemmed from their unique Gypsy nature, the effectiveness of their performance rested on the definition of their ethnic identity as separate and distinct from that of the Russian audience. Although it drew on themes deeply embedded in Russian— and European—culture, the Orientalist allure of Gypsy performance was in no small part self-created and self-perpetuated by members of Russia’s renowned Gypsy choirs. For it was only by performing their otherness that Gypsies were able to seize upon their specialized role as entertainers, which gave this group of outsiders temporary control over their elite Russian audiences even as the songs, dances, costumes, and gestures of their performance were shaped perhaps more by...

Babushki as Surrogate Wives: How Single Mothers and Grandmothers Negotiate the Division of Labor in Russia

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Much like husbands and wives, single mothers and grandmothers struggle over the sharing of paid work and “second shift” responsibilities. Using in-depth interview and ethnographic data from Russia, this article applies elements of Hochschild’s (1989) framework to illuminate sites of tension and reciprocity among single mothers and their children’s grandmothers, or babushki, demonstrating that women’s negotiations across the generational divide resemble those between husbands and wives across the gender divide. However, the rules of reciprocity are relaxed, women seldom opt out of domestic work entirely, and conflicts lead to diminished support rather than “divorce.” The author argues that both generational mothering ideologies and outer circumstances shape how women ultimately share responsibilities. When mothers and babushki pursue similar generational mothering strategies, conflict is minimized.

Between “Europe” and “Africa”: Building the “New” Ukraine on the Shoulders of Migrant Women

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Female-led migration is usually explained by a “push-pull” framework. Poverty “pushes” Third World women into domestic labor in First World countries. In this paper I broaden this framework by thinking of gender as “constitutive” of migration and placing the migration of Ukrainian women to Italy in a larger context of post-Soviet transformation. The coming of capitalism has forced many women out of the labor market and necessitated a shift from extended families with working-mothers, peripheral men, and grandmothers as primary caregivers of their grandchildren to nuclear families with mother-housewives, father-breadwinners, and displaced grandmothers. Yet men’s salaries are unable to sustain this new gender order which relies on grandmothers, doubly marginalized from the labor market and their families, to work abroad. Gender is constitutive of migration and the construction the “new” Ukraine. At a time when the definition of Ukrainian nationhood is highly contested, migrant...

Heroes, Cowards, & Traitors: The Crimean War & its Challenge to Russian Autocracy.

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Russia's defeat in the Crimean War cast new doubt upon the fundamental political traditions, social structures, national myths of the Nikolaevan era. It precipitated wide-ranging reforms, including military reforms, which were predicated on a shift in mentality. This essay examines the new notions of heroism that circulated among Russia's emerging public sphere during and after the war. It analyzes the types of heroes that were celebrated as reflections of critical changes in attitude and mindset, which prefigured the liberalizing era of Alexander II.

Weaving Shuttles and Ginseng Roots: Commodity Flows and Migration in a Borderland of the Russian Far East

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The breakdown of the Soviet Union has transformed the Russian Far East into an economic, national, and geopolitical borderland. Commodity flows and labor migration, especially from China, have created both economic challenges and opportunities for the local population. The article investigates the intricate relationships between commodities, migration, and the body in the borderland between the Russian Far East (Primorskii Krai) and northeastern China (Heilongjiang Province). Small-scale trade and smuggling in the Russian-Chinese borderland represent an important source of income for the local population. Especially tourist traders, the so-called chelnoki who cross the border on a regular basis, profit from the peculiar qualities of the region. The article explores how border economies entangle bodies and commodities on both material and conceptual levels. Chinese commodities and economic activities shape local perceptions as the experience of local Russians with migrant workers...

15 Years after the “Collapse” of Soviet Socialism: The Role of Elite Choices, Class Conflict, and a Critique of Modernization Theory

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, it is argued that the abandoning of the command administrative economy in the Soviet Union and its transformation into an ostensibly market capitalist system in post-Communist Russia was a reaction by the Soviet elite to emerging threats to their accumulated privileges and power presented from the campaign for ³socialist legality² launched by Andropov and later Gorbachev in the 1980s. Threatened by the prospect of being purged for corruption and of losing their entitlements, the Soviet elite responded to the campaign for socialist legality by transforming itself into an official bourgeoisie that could legally claim the power and property it already controlled. ³Capitalist legality² was embraced to protect this power and property from possible reappropriation from below. The challenge of Andropov and Gorbachev to the Soviet ³New Class² was ultimately defeated when the elite pushed ahead with laws that destroyed the socialist economy. The alternative explanation...

The Nature of Mass Communist Beliefs in Postcommunist Russian Political Space

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a democratizing regime in Russia during the 1990s raise several questions about the contours of Russian mass politics: Do Russians have structured beliefs that motivate political behavior? Does ideology guide Russian mass political beliefs? How has seventy years of Communist Party rule affected Russian political attitudes? This paper explores these questions through an analysis of public opinion from the 1995-1996 and 1999-2000 Russian National Election Studies.

Using covariance structure modeling on a series of attitudinal questions, this analysis finds evidence of the Leninist legacy in the beliefs exhibited by Russians in the 1990s. In order to operationalize the belief system carried over from Leninism, I create an index of attitudinal indicators reflecting the attitudes Russians hold relating to the shared experience of life under communism. I look at the possible determinants of this belief system and test the...

The Many Ends of Old Odessa: Memories of the Gilded Age in Russia’s City of Sin

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Old Odessa has been mythologized as Russia’s gilded city of sin, a multi-ethnic southern seaport bustling with international trade, where exotic goods and people saturated its markets, taverns, and beaches, imbuing the landscape with glitter and color. The city developed an infamous reputation for its brothels, criminal dens, and dissolute inhabitants – a pleasure-drenched utopia of debauchery on the wild frontiers of the Black Sea. But old Odessa is considered “old” because old Odessa is over; its golden age of opulence, wily Jewish gangsters, and relentless revelry has passed into history, and this imagined past is nostalgically commemorated as a vanished paradise, a realm solely reachable in the present through legends, folk songs, and anecdotes. But when exactly did Odessa become “old?” An analysis of the Odessa myth from the early nineteenth century to the present demonstrates that Odessa’s golden age has been mourned for its apparent passing from the city’s very inception....

From Solidarity to Division: An Analysis of Lech Walesa's Transition to Constituted Leadership

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This essay analyzes the capacity and constraints of authority in the contexts of constituted vs. non-constituted leadership. Building on Ronald Heifetz’s distinction between informal and formal authority as the basis for exercising leadership and broadcasting power, this paper evaluates the role of Lech Walesa as the leader of the Solidarity social movement and as president of Poland. It argues that the constraints of constituted authority are significantly higher than those imposed on non-constituted leaders. As a result, while constituted leaders may have greater resources available to broadcast power, the allocation of these resources entails higher expectation for their custodians. This analysis concludes that Walesa did not cope effectively with the constraints and expectations of formal authority and was more effective as a non-constituted leader.

Ethnic War, Holy War, War O' War: Does the Adjective Matter in Explaining Collective Political Violence?

Mon, 3 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This paper takes up three related questions: (1) what is the difference between ethnic and religious conflict; (2) are theories of ethnic conflict equally applicable to religious conflict; and (3) can available theories of collective violence explain why the nature of internal conflict changes over time, either with respect to individual conflicts or globally? The author argues that distinguishing among types of internal conflict is more difficult than is often assumed and that theories of ethnic conflict typically explain not ethnic conflict as distinct category but sustained internal violence in general, including "religious" conflict. Further, while these theories typically attempt to explain why conflict breaks out in some multiethnic regions but not others, they do not attempt to explain why conflict when it occurs is "ethnic" rather than something else, why the nature of individual conflicts changes over time, or why certain kinds of internal conflict are characteristic...

Does Money Buy Happiness in Unhappy Russia?

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Surveys rank Russians among the unhappiest people in the world. Contrary to popular accounts of a uniquely melancholic national character, the subjective wellbeing of Russians depends heavily on both individual and collective economic wellbeing. Individual differences in living standards account for much of the variation in happiness levels among Russians in cross-sectional survey data. These effects are particularly sharp when we expand our measure of economic status beyond income to incorporate household wealth. Individual changes in wealth, however, cannot explain the recent, dramatic improvement in the distribution of happiness in Russia. Based on panel analysis of longitudinal survey data, this shift should be attributed to the collective experience of recovery from the shock of the 1998 ruble crisis, rather than to individual economic trajectories.

The Other

Tue, 7 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The poetry and prose of the literary elite in Tajikistan took part in the strengthening of national myths as well as in the building of a national consciousness in Tajikistan before and after Perestroika. In Tajik literature of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, many defined the image of the “other” in their poetry and prose, namely Russia, Uzbekistan, and the city of Khujand. This paper expands Soviet-era kinship metaphors in Tajik poetry. Russia was seen as both a motherly figure and an evil step-mother. Neighboring Uzbekistan was portrayed as the evil step-father. And the city of Khujand, Tajikistan, was portrayed as a half-brother.

Islam and Islamic Practices in Georgia

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This article focuses on religious practices among Muslims in the Republic of Georgia today. It considers relations between Muslims and other religious groups; the influence of religion on everyday life in Georgia; the relationship between the religious and national consciousness; and tensions between supporters of the syncretic forms of Islam that have been traditionally practiced in Georgia and the allegedly "pure" and "alien" forms of Islam that are typically, although not necessarily accurately, referred to as "Wahhabism" in post-Soviet space.

Reexamining the "Serbian Exceptionalism" Thesis

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explains the non-democratic political outcome in Serbia of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the process, the author reexamines several theories of "Serbian exceptionalism" in the specialist literature on Serbia and Yugoslavia, pointing out the inadequacy of some one-sided or stereotypical views of Yugoslav history, Serbian society, and Serbian nationalism in their historical development. The goal of this paper is to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the advent of a Serbian regime that was responsible for much of the tragedy that befell the former Yugoslavia, not to absolve it from its share of responsibility for that tragedy. Neither the advent of that regime nor the subsequent tragedy that ensued can be understood without taking into account some long-term factors, such as the special place occupied by the Yugoslav state in Serbian national consciousness, the legacy of ethnic persecution in World War II, the unintended consequences of communist nationality...

The Transformation of Askar Akaev, President of Kyrgyzstan

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This paper follows the transformation of Kyrgyzstan’s president, Askar Akaev, over the course of the 1900s from an initial path of liberalization to more authoritarian tendencies. Akaev’s role in Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet trajectory is largely neglected in current scholarship, and this paper analyzes how the role of leadership compares with existing literature. This analysis focuses on how Akaev builds authority with various audiences and the constraints he had faced during his tenure. This paper explains the evolution of Akaev’s leadership strategy during 1989 to 1993 and then the period following the 1993 crisis, up to the present (2003). Next are given five alternative approaches to understanding the country’s trajectory over the 1990s and summarizes the benefits of incorporating leadership as a variable in understanding Kyrgyzstan’s transition. Finally, the president’s leadership helps to explain the country’s initial liberal path, but a full explanation of his shift to...

Why We Hate You: The Passions of National Identity and Ethnic Violence

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Emotion, the key to human motivation, is an integral part of politics. This paper shows how a consideration of emotions contributes to the existing causal theories of ethnic violence. The author begins with a discussion of identity and nation, examining how the concept of national identity has developed over time into a single unitary identity. While identities are in fact fluid, they are treated in politics are if they are immutable. The author examines the connection between emotion and action, as emotions are preconditions for making reasonable choices or prioritizing preferences. Next, the paper covers the history of emotions in political theory, in particular, how emotion is presented in opposition to rationality. In examining various theories of ethnic conflict, Suny shows how ethnic conflict is ultimately about collective action, though the initiative for violence may be located at the top. He examines two recent works in some detail: Stuart Kaufman’s Modern Hatreds...

Militant Islam in Central Asia: The Case of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), one of the three key Islamic groups active in Central Asia. The IMU is a militant and extremist Islamic organization, one that has been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. It has been linked to terrorist activity and to the attempted overthrow of Uzbek President Islam Karimov. This paper discusses the roots and causes of Islamic radicalism in general; clarifies the terms "Salafism" and "Wahhabism"; and examines violence as culture. In discussing the emergence of radical Islam (Islamism) in Uzbekistan, the author covers Salafism in Central Asia; the early Salafi ideologists; specific teachers and their disciples; and Uzbek militants abroad, in such places as Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In describing the rise of the IMU, the paper presents the IMU's early activities; the February 1999 terrorist bombings in Tashkent; terrorist networks in Central Asia; the conviction of the leaders...

The Role of Social Identity in Resistance to International Criminal Law: The Case of Serbia and the ICTY

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores antipathy to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) by Serbians, who feel that not just Slobodan Milosevic but the whole country of Serbia is on trial. The author proposes that social identity and self-categorization, as elaborated primarily by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, are intervening mechanisms that help explain this negative social reaction to international criminal law. This pair of social psychological theories are used to argue that it is the belief in a group threat which produces a strong self-categorization as a group member and predicts the function of social identity mechanisms. In the Serbian case, this paper argues that there was far less social identification at the national level, and greater diversity of national political opinion, before the NATO bombing in 1999. However, the NATO bombing constituted an inescapable threat at the national level, creating an atmosphere in which Serbians felt they were all treated alike...

Fairytale Cynicism in the Kingdom of Plastic Bags: Mapping Power and Powerlessness in Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre, Ukraine

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is an anthropological exploration of the concept of place, focusing on a city in Ukraine, which the author identifies as Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre. Globalization and international boundaries magnify the sense of importance of “place” in Chelnochovsk, where there is a strong of their locality, but a locality that is defined in opposition to “elsewhere.” Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, power in Chenochovsk has become so localized that it is expressed in terms of the local landscape. This power is articulated in rhetoric that can only be defined as fairytale. In turn, people call upon an ironic cynicism to account for and to accommodate a deep sense of powerlessness in contemporary life, and this, too, is expresses in terms of landscape. This paper seeks to move toward understanding a sense of place as a native category that goes beyond the cognitive, both palpably felt and physically located.

Is the Personal Political? The Development of Armenia's NGO Sector During the Post-Soviet Period

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the growth of the NGO (non-governmental organization) sector in Armenia in the 1990s and the impact of Western aid on its development. Armenian NGOs, in the post-Soviet period, continue to rely heavily on Western financial support. Consequently, donors determine the types of projects that are implemented, the types of issues that are addressed, how those issues are addressed (methods and solutions), and how those issues are discussed (language and discourse). Following the issue of domestic violence in Armenia’s NGO sector, this paper shows how NGO-donor relationships shape knowledge-production, information-circulation, and decision-making. The paper also argues that although Armenian NGOs are recipients of ideas, goods, and capital associated with global civil society, they are not passive consumers who accept these imports automatically and in their “pure” form. Instead, local NGO members interpret, criticize, and customize the global to the local, and...

Nationalist Mobilization and Imperial Collapse: Serbian and Russian Nationalism Compared, 1987-1991

Mon, 7 Apr 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Beginning in the late 1980s, communist regimes in both Yugoslavia and the USSR faced a crisis of legitimacy, causing a demand for competitive regional elections and widespread demands for autonomy and independence in these republics, which in turn threatened to reduce the status of the Russian and Serbian minorities there.

Despite the notable similarities in their respective political environments, Serbs mobilized in support of an extreme nationalist ideology while Russians did not. This paper compares the contrasting experiences of Russians and Serbs from 1987-1991 in order to determine whether, when, and against whom a given nation mobilizes behind an extreme nationalist ideology.

This paper examines theories of nationalism and nationalist ideologies and discusses the concept of an extreme nationalist ideology. Following is an examination of the fundamental differences between the Serbian and Russian nationalist discourses. Next, the author presents the two independent...

Croatia's Moments of Truth: The Domestic Politics of State Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines Croatia’s involvement with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The factors that have made the issue of cooperation so volatile in Croatia are addressed, shedding light on domestic politics of state cooperation with the ICTY.

The issue of cooperation--and the challenges it poses to stability and democratization in the former Yugoslavia and to the ICTY’s struggle for institutional survival--will continue to be volatile as long as the tribunal exists. The strong domestic resistance to cooperation in the Balkans underscores the challenge confronting both the ad hoc tribunals as well as the permanent International Criminal Court: how to institutionalize a system of international tribunals in which neither the winners nor losers are immune from standing trial for atrocities committed during battle.

Although the international criminal tribunals prosecute individuals and not nations, nationalist groups in Croatia...

Georgia's Pankisi Gorge: An Ethnographic Survey

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:00:00 +0000

The Pankisi Gorge region is located just south of the Georgian-Chechen border in the Republic of Georgia. Most of the inhabitants of the region are descendents of ethnic Chechen and Ingush, known as "Vainakh" or "Kists." Since 1994, Pakisi has witnessed an influx of refugees from the Russian-Chechen crises, affecting an already difficult economic and social environment and leading to an increase in crime. Tensions have broken out between Georgia and Russia stemming from fears of Chechen political activism and an increase in Islamic radicalism in the Pankisi Gorge, and since September 11, 2001, the United States has become involved in the region. This paper gives an ethnography of the various groups of the Pankisi gorge, particularly the Kist ethnic group -- discussing the migration of the various groups into the region, their family and kinship structures, and their customs -- and comments on the current situation of the region's inhabitants.

Institutions, Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: International Experience and Its Implications for the Caucasus. 1997 Caucasus Conference Report.

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 00:00:00 +0000

In the post-Cold War era, the issues of nationalism, ethnopolitics, and ethnic conflict have been most pressing in the three Transcaucasian states -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia -- and in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation. The Caucasus is extraordinarily diverse, with a rich and complicated history; along with significant linguistic diversity is a diversity of ethnically-defined "autonomous areas" that often do not coincide with the actual territorial distribution of ethnic groups, many of whom have conflicting territorial claims. The combination of extreme ethnic diversity, administrative recognition of certain minority peoples but not others, and competing territorial claims accounts, in part, for the political violence and instability in the region since the late 1980s. This has been a considerable security concern for the West, including the United States, especially due to the risk that conflict could draw in regional powers -- such as Russia, Turkey,...

State Building and the Reconstruction of Shattered Societies. 1999 Caucasus Conference Report.

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Since the late 1980s, the Caucasus and Caspian littoral states have passed through a period of extreme turmoil. In addition to the economic costs of decentralizing and marketizing their economies and the political difficulties associated with constructing new political and institutional infrastructures, they experienced interstate and intrastate war, as well as a devastating earthquake in Armenia in 1988. Despite these difficulties, there have been signs of regional stabilization and recovery in parts of the region: economic growth, an abatement of many conflicts, and an improvement of internal order; but this stabilization remains partial and precarious. This is a report from a conference held in 1999 that addressed: the prospects for democratic consolidation; comparative economic performance and prospects for recovery; the impact of Russia's economic problems and the implications of the global financial crisis for economic stabilization and restructuring; the role of outside...

The Geopolitics of Oil, Gas, and Ecology in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea Basin. 1998 Caucasus Conference Report.

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 00:00:00 +0000

In the early 1990s, energy companies around the world began to realize the enormity of the still-untapped oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Sea basin, igniting a scramble to develop new extraction and transport networks to bring these resources to the world market. The result has transformed the region into a fulcrum of geopolitical interaction: Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have formulated long-term plans to use the anticipated windfall of "petro dollars" from their reserves; the United States and Russia have vied to influence the placement of pipeline routes; and attention to the region's resources has increased pressure on disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia, and Russia and Chechnya. And all of these developments are unfolding against a backdrop of deepening ecological problems: the condition of the Black Sea, Turkish concerns over oil tankers travelling through the Bosporous Straits, the legacy of Soviet...

Mother Tongue: Linguistic Nationalism and the Cult of Translation in Postcommunist Armenia