This volume presents state-of-the-art creative scholarship in political science and area studies with an emphasis on Russia. The contributors, all well-known in their specialties, share the conviction that advancement in the social sciences can only be achieved through plural methodological approaches and interaction with various disciplines. Their work in this collection provides critical analyses of key issues in Russian and post-Soviet studies. It explores the most fruitful ways of studying Russia with particular emphasis on the federal system, politics in the era of Putin, challenges of Russian foreign policy, and Russian attitudes toward democracy. The vagaries of democracy are also explored in articles on Georgia and Turkey. Additionally, this book examines the philosophy of technology with an emphasis on critical theory, eco-domination, and engineering ethics.

The Putin and Bush presidencies, the 9/11 attack, and the war in Iraq have changed the dynamics of Russian-European-U.S. relations and strained the Western alliance. Featuring contributions by leading experts in the field, this work is the first systematic effort to reassess the status of Russia's modernization efforts in this context. Part I examines political, economic, legal, and cultural developments in Russia for evidence of convergence with Western norms. In Part II, the contributors systematically analyze Russia's relations with the European Union, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the United States in light of new security concerns and changing economic and power relationships.

The Putin and Bush presidencies, the 9/11 attack, and the war in Iraq have changed the dynamics of Russian-European-U.S. relations and strained the Western alliance. Featuring contributions by leading experts in the field, this work is the first systematic effort to reassess the status of Russia's modernization efforts in this context. Part I examines political, economic, legal, and cultural developments in Russia for evidence of convergence with Western norms. In Part II, the contributors systematically analyze Russia's relations with the European Union, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the United States in light of new security concerns and changing economic and power relationships.

National Questions consists of fifteen formerly published articles on nations and nationalism by Alexander J. Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University – Newark. Combining social science with the multidisciplinarity of area studies, Motyl discusses the malleability and modernity of national identity, the attractions and limits of social constructivist imaginings of nations, the impact of national discourses, binary morality, and historical narratives on interpretations of the Holocaust and the Holodomor, the relationship between liberalism, nationalism, and fascism, and the role of national identity and nationalism in Eastern Europe in general and the Soviet Union, Ukraine, and Russia in particular. Throughout, Motyl questions conventional wisdom, exposes its inconsistencies and weaknesses, and encourages readers to rethink their views in light of conceptual clarity, theoretical rigor, elementary logic, and empirical evidence.

Despite their historical importance, empires have received scant attention from social scientists. Now, Alexander J. Motyl examines the structure, dynamics, and continuing relevance of empire -- and asks, "Why do empires decline? Why do some empires collapse? And why do some collapsed empires revive?"

Rejecting choice-centered theories of imperial decline, Motyl maintains that the very structure of empires promotes decay and that decay in turn facilitates the progressive loss of territory. Although most major empires have in fact declined in this manner, some, such as the Soviet Union, have collapsed suddenly and comprehensively. Motyl explains how and why collapse occurs, why such an outcome is hard to foresee, and why some collapsed empires revive. While broad-ranging historically and empirically, Imperial Ends focuses on five modern empires: the Soviet, Romanov, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Wilhelmine.

Examining the possibility of a revival of the Soviet empire, Motyl points out that the expansion of NATO and the European Union, along with increasing globalization, will isolate Russia and its neighbors, promoting their dependence upon one another and perhaps facilitating the rise of the former core.

With boldly stated conclusions and concise analytical interpretations, Imperial Ends cohesively illustrates to policymakers and social scientists alike the importance of possible imperial revivals and the rise of future empires.

"Crisis in Ukraine" sets the intellectual stage for understanding the turmoil in eastern Europe, what is really at stake, and what will come next.
The arguments presented span the ideological spectrum, and the authors include a range of leading experts from several disciplines and countries, including Yuliya Tymoshenko, Alexander Motyl, Orlando Figes, Kathryn Stoner, Daniel Treisman, Brian Taylor, Kathleen McNamara, and more.
Released as policymakers in Washington and other capitals debate how to handle Ukraine, this book contains everything needed for readers to develop informed opinions of their own.

Fiction. SWEET SNOW is set in the winter of 1933 in Ukraine. A terrible famine is raging in the countryside, while the Soviet secret police is arresting suspected spies in the cities. A German nobleman from Berlin, a Jewish communist from New York, a Polish diplomat from Lwow, and a Ukrainian nationalist from Vienna come to share a cell in some unknown prison. One day, as they are being transported to another prison, their van overturns, their guards are killed, and they are freed--to wander amidst the devastated villages, desolate landscapes, snowbound villages, and frozen corpses. As they struggle to survive, they come to grips with the horror of the famine as well as with their own delusions, weaknesses, and mortality.

Themes of identity, faith, and redemption combine as a disillusioned KGB assassin and an insecure female U.S. diplomat track down an Ivy League professor running a prostitution ring in Ukraine.

Anatoly Filatov is the "whiskey priest," a despairing Communist true believer, whose world comes crashing down with the collapse of the USSR. Jane Sweet is the foreign-service officer, a Ukrainian-American woman who discovers her identity, as both a woman and a Ukrainian, while liberating herself from her past. The action heats up as Filatov, who is a part-time hit man for the Russian Mafia, kills three American professors in Vienna. The fourth, a cynical Ivy League professor and Soviet emigre, Igor Bazarov, escapes to Kiev. The four professors stole millions of dollars from the Mafia and invested in a prostitution ring that exploits Ukrainian women.

Filatov and Sweet pursue Bazarov throughout Ukraine, and, along the way, Filatov seduces Sweet. As the two close in on Bazarov, Sweet realizes she has been used--and plots revenge in a stunning conclusion.