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Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central
Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast
growing economy-at least until the 2014 crisis-a strategic location
between Russia, China, and the rest of Central Asia, and a regime
with far-reaching branding strategies. But the country also faces
weak institutionalization, patronage, authoritarianism, and
regional gaps in socioeconomic standards that challenge the
stability and prosperity narrative advanced by the aging President
Nursultan Nazarbayev. This policy-oriented analysis does not tell
us a lot about the Kazakhstani society itself and its
transformations. This edited volume returns Kazakhstan to the
scholarly spotlight, offering new, multidisciplinary insights into
the country's recent evolution, drawing from political science,
anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regime's sophisticated
legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It
analyzes the country's fast changing national identity and the
delicate balance between the Kazakh majority and the
Russian-speaking minorities. It explores how the society negotiates
deep social transformations and generates new hybrid, local and
global, cultural references.
This book discusses the return of geopolitical ideas and doctrines
to the post-Soviet space with special focus on the new phenomenon
of digital geopolitics, which is an overarching term for different
political practices including dissemination of geopolitical ideas
online, using the internet by political figures and diplomats for
legitimation and outreach activity, and viral spread of
geopolitical memes. Different chapters explore the new
possibilities and threats associated with this digitalization of
geopolitical knowledge and practice. Our authors consider new
spatial sensibilities and new identities of global as well as local
Selves, the emergence of which is facilitated by the internet. They
explore recent reconfigurations of the traditional imperial
conundrum of center versus periphery. Developing Manuel Castells'
argument that social activism in the digital era is organized
around cultural values, the essays discuss new geopolitical
ideologies which aim to reinforce Russia's spiritual sovereignty as
a unique civilization, while at the same time seeking to rebrand
Russia as a greater soft power by utilizing the Russian-speaking
diaspora or employing traditionalist rhetoric. Great Power imagery,
enemy-making, and visual mappings of Russia's future territorial
expansion are traditional means for the manipulation of imperial
pleasures and geopolitical fears. In the age of new media, however,
this is being done with greater subtlety by mobilizing the
grassroots, contracting private information channels, and
de-politicizing geopolitics. Given the political events of recent
years, it is logical that the Ukrainian crisis should provide the
thematic backdrop for most of the authors.
The 2014 Ukrainian crisis has highlighted the pro-Russia stances of
some European countries, such as Hungary and Greece, and of some
European parties, mostly on the far-right of the political
spectrum. They see themselves as victims of the EU "technocracy"
and liberal moral values, and look for new allies to denounce the
current "mainstream" and its austerity measures. These groups found
new and unexpected allies in Russia. As seen from the Kremlin,
those who denounce Brussels and its submission to U.S. interests
are potential allies of a newly re-assertive Russia that sees
itself as the torchbearer of conservative values. Predating the
Kremlin's networks, the European connections of Alexander Dugin,
the fascist geopolitician and proponent of neo-Eurasianism, paved
the way for a new pan-European illiberal ideology based on an
updated reinterpretation of fascism. Although Dugin and the
European far-right belong to the same ideological world and can be
seen as two sides of the same coin, the alliance between Putin's
regime and the European far-right is more a marriage of convenience
than one of true love. This unique book examines the European
far-right's connections with Russia and untangles this puzzle by
tracing the ideological origins and individual paths that have
materialized in this permanent dialogue between Russia and Europe.
In examining the re-emergence of Russia's White Movement, Memory
Politics and the Russian Civil War gets to the heart of the rich
20th-century memory debates going on in Putin's Russia today. The
Kremlin has been giving preference to a Soviet-lite nostalgia that
denounces the 1917 Bolshevik revolution but celebrates the birth of
a powerful Soviet Union able to bring the country to the forefront
of the international scene after the victory in World War II. Yet
in parallel, another historical narrative has gradually
consolidated on the Russian public scene, one that favours the
opposite camp, namely the White movement and the pro-tsarist groups
defeated in the early 1920s. This book offers the first
comprehensive exploration of this 'White Revenge', looking at the
different actors who promote a White and pro-Romanov rehabilitation
agenda in the political, ideological and cultural arenas and what
this historical agenda might mean for Russia, both today and
tomorrow.
This book provides the first in-depth, multidisciplinary study of
re-urbanization in Russia's Arctic regions, with a specific focus
on new mobility patterns, and the resulting birth of new urban
Arctic identities in which newcomers and labor migrants form a
rising part of. It is an invaluable reference for all those
interested in current trends in circumpolar regions, showing how
the Arctic region is becoming more diverse culturally, but also
more integrated into globalized trends in terms of economic
development, urban sustainability and migration.
Russia inspires fear. For decades, American presidents viewed the
Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” and now, the Ukrainian crisis
has added a new chapter to this narrative inherited from the Cold
War. Russia’s behavior is regarded with distrust and its
“nuisance power” arouses frustration. The country’s image has
not been so negative since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But at
the same time—and this is a key point of this book—Russia is
fearful, too. Thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union,
multiple ghosts haunt the country, its elites, and its society,
from concern over demographic and economic decline to worry about
the country’s vulnerability to external intervention, reviving
the old notion of Russia as a “besieged fortress.” Opened up
practically overnight under President Boris Yeltsin, the country
had to deal with a rapid and violent globalization. Faced with both
a West that emerged victorious from the Cold War and a shockingly
dynamic China, Russia constantly questions its identity and the
notion that its fate is to bridge East and West. Vacillating
between reformist aspirations and a fear of liberal society, which
is often portrayed as amoral and perverse, the country, and
certainly its leader Vladamir Putin, sometimes seems tempted to
take refuge in a new isolation. This book is more than timely: no
other book offers a comprehensive overview of Russia’s fears and
challenges that could help the American public to understand how
the country deals with its own issues and how this influences
Russia’s foreign policy, including the ongoing war in Ukraine.
This in-out aspect is critical to understand the country’s
international stance and therefore directly US policy and security.
Russia inspires fear. For decades, American presidents viewed the
Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” and now, the Ukrainian crisis
has added a new chapter to this narrative inherited from the Cold
War. Russia’s behavior is regarded with distrust and its
“nuisance power” arouses frustration. The country’s image has
not been so negative since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But at
the same time—and this is a key point of this book—Russia is
fearful, too. Thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union,
multiple ghosts haunt the country, its elites, and its society,
from concern over demographic and economic decline to worry about
the country’s vulnerability to external intervention, reviving
the old notion of Russia as a “besieged fortress.” Opened up
practically overnight under President Boris Yeltsin, the country
had to deal with a rapid and violent globalization. Faced with both
a West that emerged victorious from the Cold War and a shockingly
dynamic China, Russia constantly questions its identity and the
notion that its fate is to bridge East and West. Vacillating
between reformist aspirations and a fear of liberal society, which
is often portrayed as amoral and perverse, the country, and
certainly its leader Vladamir Putin, sometimes seems tempted to
take refuge in a new isolation. This book is more than timely: no
other book offers a comprehensive overview of Russia’s fears and
challenges that could help the American public to understand how
the country deals with its own issues and how this influences
Russia’s foreign policy, including the ongoing war in Ukraine.
This in-out aspect is critical to understand the country’s
international stance and therefore directly US policy and security.
This book, by one of the foremost authorities on the subject,
explores the complex nature of Russian nationalism. It examines
nationalism as a multilayered and multifaceted repertoire displayed
by a myriad of actors. It considers nationalism as various concepts
and ideas emphasizing Russia's distinctive national character,
based on the country's geography, history, Orthodoxy, and Soviet
technological advances. It analyzes the ideologies of Russia's
ultra-nationalist and far-right groups, explores the use of
nationalism in the conflict with Ukraine and the annexation of
Crimea, and discusses how Putin's political opponents, including
Alexei Navalny, make use of nationalism. Overall the book provides
a rich analysis of a key force which is profoundly affecting
political and societal developments both inside Russia and beyond.
Why do some governments and societies attach great significance to
a particular anniversary year whereas others seem less inclined to
do so? What motivates the orchestration of elaborate commemorative
activities in some countries? What are they supposed to accomplish,
for both domestic and international audience? In what ways do
commemorations in Asia Pacific fit into the global memory culture
of war commemoration? In what ways are these commemorations
intertwined with current international politics? This book presents
the first large-scale analysis of how countries in the Asia Pacific
and beyond commemorated the seventieth anniversaries of the end of
World War II. Consisting of in-depth case studies of China, Taiwan,
Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, United States, Russia,
and Germany, this unique collective effort demonstrates how
memories of the past as reflected in public commemorations and
contemporary politics-both internal and international-profoundly
affect each other.
This social and cultural analysis provides a new understanding of
Kazakhstan's younger generations that emerged during the rule of
Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been presiding over Kazakhstan for
the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Half of
Kazakhstan's population was born after he took power and have no
direct memory of the Soviet regime. Since the early 2000s, they
have lived in a world of political stability and relative material
affluence, and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even
with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal
public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free
country. This book offers the first collective study of the
"Nazarbayev Generation," illuminating the diversity of the
country's younger generations and the transformations of social and
cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three
decades. The contributors to this collection move away from
state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots
realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate
sociological data.
Central Asia is a relatively understudied neighbor of Afghanistan.
The region is often placed into a number of historical and
political contexts-a section of the Silk Road, a pawn in the "Great
Game," the "spillover" state that exemplifies the failure of US
foreign policy-that limit scholarly understanding. This edited
volume contributes by providing a broad, long-term analysis of the
Central Asia-Afghanistan relationship over the last several
decades. It addresses the legacy of Soviet intervention with a
unique first-hand selection of interviews of former Soviet Central
Asian soldiers that fought in the Soviet-Afghan War. It examines
Afghanistan's norther neighbors, discussing Russia, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan-their strategy for Afghanistan, their
perception of challenges and opportunities of the country, and
patterns of cooperation and conflict. The collection also looks at
recent US strategic initiatives in the region, in particular the
New Silk Road Initiative that envisions a growing Central
Asia-South Asia connection.
This social and cultural analysis provides a new understanding of
Kazakhstan’s younger generations that emerged during the rule of
Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been presiding over Kazakhstan for
the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Half of
Kazakhstan’s population was born after he took power and have no
direct memory of the Soviet regime. Since the early 2000s, they
have lived in a world of political stability and relative material
affluence, and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even
with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal
public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free
country. This book offers the first collective study of the
“Nazarbayev Generation,” illuminating the diversity of the
country’s younger generations and the transformations of social
and cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three
decades. The contributors to this collection move away from
state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots
realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate
sociological data.
The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space,
Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union
and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992-1997) that left
more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million
displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out
for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic
party-the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)-as a key
actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reconstruction and
democratization. Tajikistan's linguistic and cultural proximity to
Iran notwithstanding, the balance of external powers over the
country remains fairly typical of Central Asia, with Russia as the
major security provider and China as its principal investor.
Another specificity of Tajikistan is its massive labor migration
flows toward Russia. Out of a population of eight million, about
one million work abroad seasonally-one of the highest rates of
departure in the world. Migration trends have impacted Tajikistan's
economy and rent mechanisms: half of the country's GDP comes from
migrant remittances, a higher share than anywhere else in the
world. However, it is in the societal and cultural realms that
migration has had the most transformative effect. Migrants'
cultural and societal identities are on the move, with a growing
role given to Islam as a normative tool for regulating the cultural
shock of migration. Islam, and especially a globalized
fundamentalist pietist movement, regulates both physical and moral
security in workplace and other settings, and brings migrants
together to make their interactions meaningful and
socio-politically relevant. It offers a new social prestige to
those who work in an environment seen as threatening to their
Islamic identity. The first section of this volume investigates the
critical question of the nature of the Tajik political regime, its
stability, legitimacy mechanisms, and patterns of centralization.
In the volume's second part, we move away from studying the state
to delve into the societal fabric of Tajikistan, shaped by local
rural specificities and social vulnerabilities in the health sector
and gender relationships. The third section of the volume is
devoted to identity narratives and changes. While the Tajik regime
works hard to control the national narrative and the interpretation
of the civil war, society is literally and figuratively on the
move, as migration profoundly reshapes societal structures and
cultural values.
After twenty-five years of independence, there is little doubt that
the five Central Asian states will persist as sovereign,
independent states. They increasingly differ from each other, and
are making their way in global politics. No longer connected only
to Russia, they are now connected in important ways to Afghanistan,
South Asia, China, Iran, and each other. This volume covers a wide
range of issues and presents the work of emerging scholars authors
well-known for their expertise in the region. The first part
addresses social issues. Covering a wide range from HIV/AIDs to
social media, the rebirth of Islam, outmigration, and problematic
borders, this section follows two main currents: political
development in the region and states' responses to transboundary
challenges. The second part, addressing economics and security,
provides analyses of new infrastructure, informal economies (from
bazaars to criminal networks), energy development, the role of
enclaves in the Ferghana Valley, and the development of the states'
military structures. This section illuminates the interactions
between economic developments and security, and the forces that
could undermine both. The final part, comprised of five case
studies, offers a "deeper dive" into a specific factor that matters
in the development of each Central Asian state. These cases include
Kazakhstan's foreign policy identity, Kyrgyzstan's domestic
politics, Tajikistan's pursuit of hydropower, foreign direct
investment in Turkmenistan, and the perception of everyday
corruption in Uzbekistan.
Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan has attracted the attention
of the academic and policy communities because of its geostrategic
importance, its critical role in shaping or unshaping Central Asia
as a region, its economic and trade potential, and its demographic
weight: every other Central Asian being Uzbek, Uzbekistan's
political, social, and cultural evolutions largely exemplify the
transformations of the region as a whole. And yet, more than 25
years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, evaluating
Uzbekistan's post-Soviet transformation remains complicated.
Practitioners and scholars have seen access to sources, data, and
fieldwork progressively restricted since the early 2000s. The death
of President Islam Karimov, in power for a quarter of century, in
late 2016, reopened the future of the country, offering it more
room for evolution. To better grasp the challenges facing
post-Karimov Uzbekistan, this volume reviews nearly three decades
of independence. In the first part, it discusses the political
construct of Uzbekistan under Karimov, based on the delineation
between the state, the elite, and the people, and the tight links
between politics and economy. The second section of the volume
delves into the social and cultural changes related to labor
migration and one specific trigger - the difficulties to reform
agriculture. The third part explores the place of religion in
Uzbekistan, both at the state level and in society, while the last
part looks at the renegotiation of collective identities.
Central Asia is a relatively understudied neighbor of Afghanistan.
The region is often placed into a number of historical and
political contexts-a section of the Silk Road, a pawn in the "Great
Game," the "spillover" state that exemplifies the failure of US
foreign policy-that limit scholarly understanding. This edited
volume contributes by providing a broad, long-term analysis of the
Central Asia-Afghanistan relationship over the last several
decades. It addresses the legacy of Soviet intervention with a
unique first-hand selection of interviews of former Soviet Central
Asian soldiers that fought in the Soviet-Afghan War. It examines
Afghanistan's norther neighbors, discussing Russia, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan-their strategy for Afghanistan, their
perception of challenges and opportunities of the country, and
patterns of cooperation and conflict. The collection also looks at
recent US strategic initiatives in the region, in particular the
New Silk Road Initiative that envisions a growing Central
Asia-South Asia connection.
Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central
Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast
growing economy-at least until the 2014 crisis-a strategic location
between Russia, China, and the rest of Central Asia, and a regime
with far-reaching branding strategies. But the country also faces
weak institutionalization, patronage, authoritarianism, and
regional gaps in socioeconomic standards that challenge the
stability and prosperity narrative advanced by the aging President
Nursultan Nazarbayev. This policy-oriented analysis does not tell
us a lot about the Kazakhstani society itself and its
transformations. This edited volume returns Kazakhstan to the
scholarly spotlight, offering new, multidisciplinary insights into
the country's recent evolution, drawing from political science,
anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regime's sophisticated
legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It
analyzes the country's fast changing national identity and the
delicate balance between the Kazakh majority and the
Russian-speaking minorities. It explores how the society negotiates
deep social transformations and generates new hybrid, local and
global, cultural references.
This book provides the first in-depth, multidisciplinary study of
re-urbanization in Russia's Arctic regions, with a specific focus
on new mobility patterns, and the resulting birth of new urban
Arctic identities in which newcomers and labor migrants form a
rising part of. It is an invaluable reference for all those
interested in current trends in circumpolar regions, showing how
the Arctic region is becoming more diverse culturally, but also
more integrated into globalized trends in terms of economic
development, urban sustainability and migration.
The European Union in a Reconnecting Eurasia examines the full
scope of EU interests in the South Caucasus and Central Asia and
analyzes the broad outlines of EU engagement over the coming years.
It is part of a six-part CSIS series, "Eurasia from the Outside
In," which includes studies focusing on Turkey, the European Union,
Iran, India, Russia, and China.
Kyrgyzstan is probably the best known of any central Asian country,
the one that has elicited the most academic publications, reports
by NGOs or advocacy groups, and op-eds in the media. The country
opened up massively to Western influence through development aid
for civil society and for economic reforms, faced two revolutions
in 2005 and 2010, and experienced bloody interethnic conflict in
2010. Kyrgyzstan is therefore commonly studied as a twin case: that
of having been, for more than two decades, both an "island of
democracy" in Central Asia-and the only country of the region to
have made the transition to a parliamentary regime-and the
archetypical example of a "failing state," one marked by endemic
corruption, criminalization of the state apparatus, and collapse of
public services. This volume goes beyond these two cliches and
provides a research-based and unideological narrative on the
country. It identifies political dynamics, their powerbrokers, and
the role of international organizations; investigates the profound
social transformations of both the rural and the urban worlds; and
examines the broad feeling, by local actors, that Kyrgyzstan's
fragile state identity should be consolidated. This book gives the
floor to the new generation of scholars whose long-term
vernacular-language field research made it possible to provide new
interpretative prisms for the complex evolution of Kyrgyzstan.
More than two decades after the break-up of the Soviet Union,
Central Asian republics-Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan-continue to reexamine and debate whom
and what they represent. Nationalism and Identity Construction in
Central Asia explores the complex and controversial process of
identity formation in the region using a "3D" framework, which
stands for "Dimensions", "Dynamics," and "Directions" of nation
building. The first part of the framework-dimensions-underscores
the new and complex ways in which nationalisms and identities
manifest themselves in Central Asia. The second part-dynamics-is
premised on the idea that nationalisms and identity construction in
the Central Asian republics may indicate some continuities with the
past, but are more concerned with legitimation of the present power
politics in these states. It calls for the identification of the
main actors, strategies, tactics, interests, and reactions to the
processes of nationalism and identity construction. The third part
of the framework-directions-addresses implications of nationalisms
and identity construction in Central Asia for regional and
international peace and cooperation. Jointly, the chapters of the
volume address domestic and international-level dimensions,
dynamics, and directions of identity formation in Central Asia.
What unites these works is their shared modern and post-modern
understanding of nations, nationalisms, and identities as
discursive, strategic, and tactical formations. They are viewed as
"constructed" and "imagined" and therefore continuously changing,
but also fragmented and contested.
This book offers the first comprehensive examination of Russia's
Arctic strategy, ranging from climate change issues and territorial
disputes to energy policy and domestic challenges. As the receding
polar ice increases the accessibility of the Arctic region, rival
powers have been manoeuvering for geopolitical and resource
security. Geographically, Russia controls half of the Arctic
coastline, 40 percent of the land area beyond the Circumpolar
North, and three quarters of the Arctic population. In total, the
sea and land surface area of the Russian Arctic is about 6 million
square kilometres. Economically, as much as 20 percent of Russia's
GDP and its total exports is generated north of the Arctic Circle.
In terms of resources, about 95 percent of its gas, 75 percent of
its oil, 96 percent of its platinum, 90 percent of its nickel and
cobalt, and 60 percent of its copper reserves are found in Arctic
and Sub-Arctic regions. Add to this the riches of the continental
shelf, seabed, and waters, ranging from rare earth minerals to fish
stocks. After a spike of aggressive rhetoric when Russia planted
its flag in the Arctic seabed in 2007, Moscow has attempted to
strengthen its position as a key factor in developing an
international consensus concerning a region where its relative
advantages are manifest, despite its diminishing military,
technological, and human capacities.
In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both
geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources
compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious
internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need
for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the
need to maintain control over them in the interest of state
sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other
global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are
fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This
pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary
international economic and political context answers the needs of
both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course
adoption.
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