Download or read book Understanding Russian Politics written by Stephen White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and compelling interpretation of Russian politics by a leading authority, this textbook focuses on political developments in the world's largest country under Putin and Medvedev. Using a wealth of primary sources, it covers economic, social and foreign policy, and the 'system' of politics that has developed in recent years. Opposing arguments are presented and students are encouraged to reach their own judgements on key events and issues such as privatisation and corruption. This textbook tackles timely topics such as gender and inequality issues; organised religion; the economic krizis; and Russia's place in the international community. It uses numerous examples to place this powerful and richly-endowed country in context, with a focus on the place of ordinary people which shows how policy is translated to Russians' everyday lives.
Download or read book Understanding Russia written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book provides a balanced and comprehensive overview of the geographical, historical, political, cultural, and geostrategic factors that drive Russia today. Russia has long inspired fear in the West, but as the authors argue, Russia is fearful as well. Three decades after the transformations launched by perestroika, multiple ghosts haunt both Russian elites and ordinary citizens, ranging from concerns about territorial challenges, societal transformations, and economic decline to worries about the country’s vulnerability to external intervention. Faced with a West that emerged victorious from the Cold War, a shockingly dynamic China, and former Soviet republics claiming their right to emancipate themselves from Moscow’s stranglehold, Russia is constantly questioning its identity, its development path, and its role on the international scene. The country hesitates between two strategies: take refuge in a new isolation and revive the old notion of being a “besieged fortress,” or replay the messianic myth of a Third Rome, the last bastion of Christian values in the face of a decadent West. Explaining Russia’s perspective, Marlene Laruelle and Jean Radvanyi offers a much-needed analysis that will help readers understand how the country deals with its domestic issues and how these influence Russian foreign policy.
Download or read book The Russian Understanding of War written by Oscar Jonsson and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. While other books describe current Russian practice, Oscar Jonsson provides the long view to show how Russian military strategic thinking has developed from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. He closely examines Russian primary sources including security doctrines and the writings and statements of Russian military theorists and political elites. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011/12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means. This book provides much needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.
Download or read book Understand Russia written by Tanya Golubeva and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first questions people typically ask a Russian: "Is it always very cold in Russia?" and "Do you always drink vodka?" This book answers these and many more real questions sent by people living in 100+ countries. Although Russia is in the world news a lot, it is still a black box. Media outlets mostly cover such topics as politics, international relations, and current events, and multiple guide books provide practical information for tourists. However, none of those sources provide an in-depth understanding of day-to-day life in Russia. This book gives readers an insider's view on the psychology and habits of Russian people, describes how people live their daily life now as opposed to during the Soviet era, and helps its readers to understand the past, present, and future of Russia. The author, Tanya Golubeva was born in Moscow at the time, when the country was still called USSR. Her personal story is quite unusual, she had a unique opportunity to travel and live in other countries even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Embracing different cultures and learning about cross-cultural differences has become her passion. Finally, she decided to write the blog and later the book, that will help you to Understand Russia. Discover, be surprised, laugh, and enjoy!
Download or read book Russia and the World written by Natalia Tsvetkova and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-02-20 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding International Relations: Russia and the World examines world politics through the lens of Russia and its effects on the international system. Contributors to this volume examine Russian politics, economics, global and regional policies, and history in order to better understand Russia’s place in world politics. This book explores the impact Russia has on international politics in three parts: how current theories in international relations studies treat Russia, the primary disputes in modern world politics relating to Russia, and Russian policies and their effects around the world. This collection offers a comprehensive view of Russia’s place in the global political system by exploring Russian foreign policy, the economy and statecraft, the Arctic, global organizations, arms control, national security, the environment, soft power, and Russian relations with the United States, Europe, and Eurasia.
Download or read book Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior written by Graeme P. Herd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.
Download or read book From Nyet to Da written by Yale Richmond and published by Nicholas Brealey. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated fourth edition In the wake of the Cold War and perestroika, the New Russia is finding its place in the global world. No longer a superpower, but still a nation with great influence, Russia remains an enigmatic and mysterious land. Like earlier editions, the new fourth edition of From Nyet to Da illuminates the dynamics of traditional Russian culture in the framework of contemporary events, such as the March 2008 elections and the Georgian conflict. With a new preface, and updates and revisions throughout, From Nyet to Da enlightens readers about virtually every aspect of Russian life, covering social and interpersonal skills as well as the underlying cultural assumptions and values of the Russian people.
Download or read book An Environmental History of Russia written by Paul Josephson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This environmental history of the former Soviet Union explores the impact that state economic development programs had on the environment.
Download or read book The Everything Learning Russian Book with CD written by Julia Stakhnevich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you're planning a trip to Russia or adding a second language to your resume, this book will help you to: recognize and read Cyrillic letters; pronounce Russian words like a native; ask for directions, order dinner, and conduct business; and hold your own in a conversation. Includes step-by-step lessons in vocabulary, grammar, and conversation.
Download or read book Understanding Contemporary Russia written by Michael L. Bressler and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides a thorough introduction to Russia as it confronts the challenges of modern day's interdependent world. Interdisciplinary in design, the book draws on different scholars to provide sophisticated yet accessible treatments of subjects ranging from geography and history to politics and economics.
Download or read book Kremlin Rising written by Peter Baker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-06-07 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin. During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia. But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show how the political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia. With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.
Download or read book Food in Russian History and Culture written by Musya Glants and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Collection of Original Essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture from Kievan times to the present. A wide array of sources - including chronicles, diaries, letters, police records, poems, novels, folklore, paintings, and cookbooks - help to interpret the moral and spiritual role of food in Russian culture. Stovelore in Russian folklife, fasting in Russian peasant culture, food as power in Dostoevsky's fiction, Tolstoy and vegetarianism, restaurants in early Soviet Russia, Soviet cookery and cookbooks, and food as art in Soviet paintings are among the topics discussed in this appealing volume.
Download or read book The Story of Russia written by Orlando Figes and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is the essential backstory, the history book that you need if you want to understand modern Russia and its wars with Ukraine, with its neighbors, with America, and with the West.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy and Red Famine Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews From “the great storyteller of Russian history” (Financial Times), a brilliant account of the national mythologies and imperial ideologies that have shaped Russia’s past and politics—essential reading for understanding the country today The Story of Russia is a fresh approach to the thousand years of Russia’s history, concerned as much with the ideas that have shaped how Russians think about their past as it is with the events and personalities comprising it. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies. From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin’s war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russia’s actions throughout its long and troubled existence. Whether he's describing the crowning of Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral or the dramatic upheaval of the peasant revolution, he reveals the impulses, often unappreciated or misunderstood by foreigners, that have driven Russian history: the medieval myth of Mother Russia’s holy mission to the world; the imperial tendency toward autocratic rule; the popular belief in a paternal tsar dispensing truth and justice; the cult of sacrifice rooted in the idea of the “Russian soul”; and always, the nationalist myth of Russia’s unjust treatment by the West. How the Russians came to tell their story and to revise it so often as they went along is not only a vital aspect of their history; it is also our best means of understanding how the country thinks and acts today. Based on a lifetime of scholarship and enthrallingly written, The Story of Russia is quintessential Figes: sweeping, revelatory, and masterful.
Download or read book Russian Energy Chains written by Margarita M. Balmaceda and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia’s use of its vast energy resources for leverage against post-Soviet states such as Ukraine is widely recognized as a threat. Yet we cannot understand this danger without also understanding the opportunity that Russian energy represents. From corruption-related profits to transportation-fee income to subsidized prices, many within these states have benefited by participating in Russian energy exports. To understand Russian energy power in the region, it is necessary to look at the entire value chain—including production, processing, transportation, and marketing—and at the full spectrum of domestic and external actors involved, from Gazprom to regional oligarchs to European Union regulators. This book follows Russia’s three largest fossil-fuel exports—natural gas, oil, and coal—from production in Siberia through transportation via Ukraine to final use in Germany in order to understand the tension between energy as threat and as opportunity. Margarita M. Balmaceda reveals how this dynamic has been a key driver of political development in post-Soviet states in the period between independence in 1991 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. She analyzes how the physical characteristics of different types of energy, by shaping how they can be transported, distributed, and even stolen, affect how each is used—not only technically but also politically. Both a geopolitical travelogue of the journey of three fossil fuels across continents and an incisive analysis of technology’s role in fossil-fuel politics and economics, this book offers new ways of thinking about energy in Eurasia and beyond.
Download or read book The Kremlin Playbook written by Heather A. Conley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the Central and Eastern European region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decisionmaking. This report from the CSIS Europe Program, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, is the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia.
Download or read book Russian Social Media Influence written by Todd C. Helmus and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.
Download or read book The Future Is History written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
