The fall of the Soviet Union was one of the most dramatic events of this century. It was also one of the most surprising. Perhaps because many Sovietologists neglected its status as an empire, most Americans were taken completely by surprise when the USSR began its precipitous collapse under Mikhail Gorbachev. This book subjects the Soviet Union as an empire to systematic scrutiny, using tools and methods at the disposal of modern political science. Foreign policy specialists, defense experts, and Russian area analysts will find this book essential. The book is also recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in Russian and Soviet history and the study of empires.

This book subjects the Soviet Union as an empire to systematic scrutiny, using tools and methods at the disposal of modern political science. Foreign policy specialists, defense experts, and Russian area analysts will find this book essential. The book is also recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in Russian and Soviet history and the study of empires.

Offering a comprehensive overview of the security dynamics of an under-analyzed region of the world, Central Asia and South Caucasus, this volume contains contributions from leading experts who examine policies of the major players in the region including Russia, China, India, Iran and Turkey. The volume incorporates thematic chapters which detail economic and security analyses in the post-September 11th era. It will appeal to both the academic and reference audiences and to the broader scholarly market in the disciplines of foreign policy, international security, Eurasian studies, and peace and conflict studies.

This comprehensive book focuses on the challenges facing Ukraine as a newly emerged state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like all countries with no recent history of independence, Ukraine had to invent or recreate effective political institutions, reintroduce a market economy, and reorient its foreign policy. These tasks were impossible to accomplish without resolving the question of national identity. In this balanced and clear-eyed assessment, a team of U.S. and Ukrainian specialists explores the external and internal dimensions of national identity and statehood, providing a wealth of information previously unavailable to Western scholars. Arguing that the search for national identity is a multidimensional process, the authors show that it reflects the realities of the dawning twenty-first century. Paradoxically, this quest must cope with the both the weakening of state boundaries caused by globalization and the strengthening of the national model as new countries emerge from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. After providing the historical context of Ukraine s international debut, the book analyzes the complexities of constructing a national identity. The authors explore questions of ethnic relations and regionalism, the development of political values and attitudes, mass-elite relations, the cultural background of economic strategies, gender issues, and the threat of organized crime to emergent civil society."

Offering a comprehensive overview of the security dynamics of an under-analyzed region of the world, Central Asia and South Caucasus, this volume contains contributions from leading experts who examine policies of the major players in the region including Russia, China, India, Iran and Turkey. The volume incorporates thematic chapters which detail economic and security analyses in the post-September 11th era. It will appeal to both the academic and reference audiences and to the broader scholarly market in the disciplines of foreign policy, international security, Eurasian studies, and peace and conflict studies.

Some sentences contain no overt quantifier, yet are interpreted quantificationally, e.g., Plumbers are available (entailing that some plumbers are available), or Plumbers are intelligent (whose entailment is less clear, but seems to be saying that a large number of plumbers are intelligent). Where does the quantifier come from? In this book, Ariel Cohen makes the novel proposal that the quantifier is not simply an empty category, but is generated by reinterpretations mechanisms, which are governed by well specified principles. He demonstrates how the puzzling and sometimes mysterious properties of such sentences can be naturally derived from the reinterpretation mechanisms that generate them. The resulting picture has substantial implications that language contains hidden elements, underlying its surface structure.

In August 2008, the armed conflict on the territory of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke out between Russia and Georgia. The Russian-planned military campaign lasted 5 days until the parties reached a preliminary ceasefire agreement on August 12. The European Union, led by the French presidency, mediated the ceasefire. After signing the agreement, Russia pulled most of its troops out of uncontested Georgian territories, but established buffer zones around Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, making them a part of what Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Moscow's "zone of privileged interests." Since then, Russia has deployed troops to five military bases on occupied Georgian territory. This conflict clearly demonstrated weaknesses inherent in NATO and European Union security systems.

In August 2008, the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia broke out on the territory of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russian-planned military campaign lasted 5 days until the parties reached a preliminary ceasefire agreement on August 12. The European Union (EU), led by the French presidency, mediated the ceasefire. After signing the agreement, Russia pulled most of its troops out of uncontested Georgian territories, but established buffer zones around Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, making them a part of what President Dmitry Medvedev called Moscow's "zone of privileged interests," and since then deploying five military bases on occupied Georgian territory. In their monograph, Dr. Ariel Cohen and Colonel Robert Hamilton show how Russia won the war against Georgia by analyzing the goals of war, which include the annexation of Abkhazia, the weakening or toppling the Saakashvili regime, and the prevention of NATO enlargement in the Caucasus. The war demonstrated that Russia's military is in need of significant reforms and it indicated which of those reforms are currently being implemented. Finally, the war highlighted weaknesses of the NATO and EU security system as it pertains to Eastern Europe and specifically to the countries of the former Soviet Union.

The North Caucasus has been a source of instability for Russia ever since the Russian Empire brought the region under its control in the course of the late-18th and the first half of the 19th centuries. General Alexei Yermolov, a top Russian commander in North Caucasus, used inhumanely harsh methods to conquer the region and retain it under the Romanov crown's control. Hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed, and many civilians murdered. In the Russian Civil War (1918-21), which took place right after World War I, the North Caucasus became a victim of both the tsarist White Army and the communist Red Army, who plundered the region and refused to give its peoples the rights they hoped to regain after the war was over. A little over 2 decades after that, the North Caucasus nations faced merciless deportations as a result of imaginary crimes they allegedly committed against the Soviet Union during World War II.

The fall of the Soviet Union was one of the most dramatic events of this century. It was also one of the most surprising. Evidence of the USSR's impending fall was abundantly available both in theory in the writings on empires and on the ground. Yet, prior to its downfall, the very profession that specialized in the study of the Soviet Union held no consensus that the USSR "was" an empire to begin with. Perhaps because many Sovietologists neglected its status as an empire, most Americans were taken completely by surprise when the USSR began its precipitous collapse under Mikhail Gorbachev.

This book subjects the Soviet Union as an empire to systematic scrutiny, using tools and methods at the disposal of modern political science. Foreign policy specialists, defense experts, and Russian area analysts will find this book essential. The book is also recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in Russian and Soviet history and the study of empires.