Russia and the Post-Soviet States

Governments And Politics In Russia And The Post-soviet Region by Vicki L. Hesli

This text investigates and evaluates the developing political processes in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, and Uzbekistan. Students will come to understand the newly formed political institutions in this region through comparison with other established democracies in Europe and North America, historical overviews of the Tsarist and Soviet periods, as well as summaries of socialist and communist philosophies. Comparative case studies explain the divergent paths taken since the break up of th...

The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus by Christoph Zurcher

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The Post-Soviet Wars is a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Zürcher's goal is to understand the origin and nature of the violence in these regions, the response and suppression from the post-Soviet regime and the resulting outcomes, all with an eye toward understanding why some conflicts turned violent, whereas others not. Nota...

Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics Of Intervention (New Anthropologies of Europe) by Michele Rivkin-Fish

In the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, deteriorating public health indicators such as below-replacement fertility and high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, birth traumas, and maternal mortality raised acute anxieties about Russia's future. This study documents the efforts of global and local experts, and ordinary Russian women in St. Petersburg, to explain Russia's maternal health problems and devise reforms to solve them. Examining both official health pro...0 points

Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post Soviet Countries (Rural Economies in Transition) by Zvi Lerman, Csaba Csaki, Gershon Feder

In Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post Soviet Countries authors Zvi Lerman, Csaba Csaki, and Gershon Feder study the land policies and farming structures of these newly emerging nations as components of institutional change in the rural sector - change from a centralized rural economy to a market-oriented economy.0 points

Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kasakhstan by Joma Nazpary

In the 1990s, the former Soviet states of Central Asia experienced dramatic, revolutionary changes. Liberal economic reforms have affected every aspect of daily life, a new local elite of Mafia has rapidly taken power, and corruption and violence are now a fact of daily life.

Focusing on Kazakhstan, A Global Brothel examines the impact of the new capitalism on the everyday lives of the people of Central Asia. The author draws on extensive interviews as well as social and political analyses to ex...

Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds: Poems by Eleanor Lerman

Eleanor Lerman, whose last collection, The Mystery of Meteors (2001), was named by Library Journal as "Best of Poetry, 2001," returns with a dazzling, funny, and seriously mature new book.

In Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds, Lerman boldly wrests contemporary mysticism from a hard-knock New York Jewish consciousness. She's a solid witness to the 1960s, Cold War, Vietnam, sexual revolution, and drugs. However, in her favor, she's traveled through baby boomer irony, bought the T-shirt, and found he...

Consumption and Social Change in a Post-Soviet Middle Class by Jennifer Patico

What happens when your once-dignified profession no longer supports a dignified lifestyle? In 1990s St. Petersburg, teachers had to find out the hard way. Although the institutions and ideologies of Soviet life situated them as "cultured" consumers, contemporary processes of marketization and privatization left them unable to attain what they now considered to be respectable material standards of living. In this fascinating new ethnographic study, Patico examines the various ways in which teache...0 points

Post-Soviet: Art and Architecture by Alexey Yurasovsky

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Post-Soviet Russia by Roy Medvedev

Roy Medvedev, one of the world's best-known Russian scholars and a former consultant to both Gorbachev and Yeltsin analyzes the main events that have transpired in the Russian federation since late August 1991. He looks at the plans that were meant to restructure a society in crisis but -- for reasons both complex and obvious -- were destined to fail. From the drastic liberalization of prices and "shock therapy" to the privatization of state owned property and Yeltsin's resignation and replaceme...

The Re-Islamization of Society and the Position of Women in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan (Inner Asia (Global Oriental)) by Marfua Tokhtakhodzhaeva

In 1991, following the collapse of the USSR, Uzbekistan reappeared on the world map as an independent state within the Russian Federation, choosing the path of secular development and the creation of a democratic society. It also declared itself to be once again part of the Islamic world, where it had been for centuries, albeit on its periphery in Inner Asia. Yet, almost instantaneously, the modernization of the state was subsumed into the reestablishment of traditional Islam which immediately i...0 points

Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World by Andrew Wilson

States like Russia and Ukraine may not have gone back to totalitarianism or the traditional authoritarian formula of stuffing the ballot box, cowing the population and imprisoning the opposition-or not obviously. But a whole industry of "political technology" has developed instead, with shadowy private firms and government "fixers" on lucrative contracts dedicated to the black arts of organizing electoral success.

This book uncovers the sophisticated techniques of the %u...

Russia On Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema (KINO - The Russian Cinema)

This is the first book to deal exclusively with Russian cinema of the 1990s. It introduces readers to the currents and common interests of contemporary Russian cinema, offers close studies of the work of filmmakers like Sokurov, Muratova and Astrakhan, reviews the Russian film industry in a period of massive economic transformation, and assesses cinema's function as a definer of Russia's new identity.
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The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth by Jessica Allina-Pisano

In the 1990s, as the Soviet Empire lay in ruins, the Russian and Ukrainian governments undertook a project to dismantle the collective farm system that was created under Stalin and in the process privatize an expanse of farmland larger than Australia. Ordinary people were supposed to benefit from the reform, but local government leaders quietly rebelled against it. The end result was the dispossession of millions of rural people. This is the first book to explain why and how this happened throug...0 points

The Soviet Political Mind: Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change by Robert C. Tucker

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Humanitarian Aid in Post-Soviet Countries: An Anthropological Perspective (Central Asian Studies) by L Atlani-Duault

Published originally in French, this revised and updated English edition presents an original and insightful approach to the problem of humanitarian aid in the Central Asian and Caucasus region.

National Identity and Globalization: Youth, State, and Society in Post-Soviet Eurasia by Douglas W. Blum

Is globalization in danger of diluting national identities and 'transnationalizing' cultures? How can societies attempt to manage globalization and become developed while maintaining a viable national identity? In a study of three globalizing states and cities in post-Soviet Eurasia - Russia (Astrakhan), Kazakhstan (Almaty), and Azerbaijan (Baku) - Douglas W. Blum provides an empirical examination of national identity formation, exploring how cultures, particularly youth cultures, have been affe...0 points

The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Power, Change and Conflicting Messages (Basees/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies) by Birgit Beumers:

Presenting original research from a number of well-known international specialists, this book is a detailed investigation of the development of mass media in Russia since the end of Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Complementing and building upon its companion volume, Television in Putin's Russia, this book:

• surveys the key developments in Russian media since 1991, including the printed press, television and new media
• investigates the contradictions of the post-Soviet media market t...

The Post Soviet States: Mapping the Politics of Transition by Graham Smith

The collapse of the Soviet Union has engendered one of the most momentous and critical regional transformations of our times through formation and development of the post-Soviet states. This book explores the politics of post-Soviet transition and the problems which will continue to face these states in the twenty-first century as they struggle toward democracy, market reform, ethnic co-existence and integration into a new geopolitical post-Cold War world order.

Richly illustrated with examples...0 points

Leon Trotsky and the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification by David North

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) ranks among the greatest and most controversial figures in the political history of the 20th century. During his lifetime he was the target of a vicious campaign of lies orchestrated by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which culminated in his assassination in exile. Nearly 70 years after Trotsky's death, long-discredited Stalinist distortions and falsifications of his ideas and actions are finding their way into mainstream academic literature. In this penetratin...0 points

National Purpose In The World Economy: Post-Soviet States In Comparative Perspective (Cornell Studies in Political Economy) by Rawi Abdelal

How do national identities affect the world economy? Building on the insight that nationalisms and national identities endow economic policy with social purpose, Rawi Abdelal proposes a novel theoretical framework, a distinctively Nationalist perspective on international political economy, to answer this question. Using this framework, and drawing on field research in Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, he provides an in-depth look at the link between national identity and the economic policies of....0 points

Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition: Nation Building, Economic Survival, and Civic Activism (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

Women in the former Soviet Union, despite a legacy of high levels of education and labor force participation, face a host of new problems, according to editors Kathleen Kuehnast and Carol Nechemias. Neo-familialist ideologies have arisen, with a longing for the return of traditional families. A gendered division of labor in the market economy has pushed women to the bottom of the pyramid of small businesses as bazaar merchants. And in the political arena, men dominate formal government structure...0 points

Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia by Ivan Zasoursky

This book describes the rise of independent mass media in Russia, from the loosening of censorship under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost to the proliferation of independent newspapers and the rise of media barons during the Yeltsin years. The role of the Internet, the impact of the 1998 financial crisis, the succession of Putin, and the effort to reimpose central power over privately controlled media empires mark the end of the first decade of a Russian free press. Throughout the book, there is a...0 points

Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia by Fran Markowitz

Anthropologist Fran Markowitz interviewed more than one hundred Russian teenagers to discover how adolescents have been coping with their country's seismic transitions. Her findings present a substantive challenge to near-axiomatic theories of human development that regard cultural stability as indispensable to the successful navigation of adolescence. Markowitz's fieldwork leads to the surprising conclusion that the disruptions brought by glasnost, perestroika, and the fragmentation of the USSR...0 points

Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis by Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Lee Walker

Presents 16 case studies of ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet world. The book places ethnic conflict in the context of imperial collapse, democratisation and state building.0 points

Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia by Hila Pilkington

Hilary Pilkington's extensively researched book, which provides completely new empirical data drawn from interviews with almost 200 forced migrants, explores the impact that these displaced "Russian minorities" have had on post-Soviet Russia. The scale of reintegration has caused many problems both for those returning to their ethnic homeland and the "receiveing" populations. This study unravels the situation, focusing on the relationship between displacement, migration and identity and developi...0 points