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Book Russia  Putin s Playground

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anastasia Edel
  • Publisher : Callisto Media, Inc.
  • Release : 2016-01-05
  • ISBN : 1942411634
  • Pages : 154 pages

Download or read book Russia Putin s Playground written by Anastasia Edel and published by Callisto Media, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar Is Russia in the hands of a lunatic? Ever since Vladimir Putin’s presidential incarnation, pundits and political analysts have asked this question with increasing frequency. Known for his aggressive politics abroad, and irresponsible despotism domestically, the leader of the world’s largest nation holds seemingly limitless control over his people. But Putin is only the latest face of Russian political power: understanding his rule means understanding Russia. In Russia: Putin’s Playground, Anastasia Edel explores the tumultuous relationship between the Russian state and its people, and traces Russia’s history from its inception through Putin's controversial rule. In a series of short and punchy articles, Putin’s Playground examines every facet of Russian life and culture―from literature to oligarchs including Peter the Great to punk protesters Pussy Riot.

Book Putin s Playground

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anastasia Edel
  • Publisher : Lightning Guides
  • Release : 2016-01-05
  • ISBN : 9781942411628
  • Pages : 118 pages

Download or read book Putin s Playground written by Anastasia Edel and published by Lightning Guides. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar Is Russia in the hands of a lunatic? Ever since Vladimir Putin's presidential incarnation, pundits and political analysts have asked this question with increasing frequency. Known for his aggressive politics abroad, and irresponsible despotism domestically, the leader of the world's largest nation holds seemingly limitless control over his people. But Putin is only the latest face of Russian political power: understanding his rule means understanding Russia. In Russia: Putin's Playground, Anastasia Edel explores the tumultuous relationship between the Russian state and its people, and traces Russia's history from its inception through Putin's controversial rule. In a series of short and punchy articles, Putin's Playground examines every facet of Russian life and culture-from literature to oligarchs including Peter the Great to punk protesters Pussy Riot.

Book Putin s People

    Book Details:
  • Author : Catherine Belton
  • Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Release : 2020-06-23
  • ISBN : 0374712786
  • Pages : 405 pages

Download or read book Putin s People written by Catherine Belton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph "[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic "This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

Book Putin s Olympics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert W. Orttung
  • Publisher : Taylor & Francis
  • Release : 2017-02-24
  • ISBN : 1317813170
  • Pages : 151 pages

Download or read book Putin s Olympics written by Robert W. Orttung and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Vladimir Putin’s Olympic venture put the workings of contemporary Russia on vivid display. The Sochi Olympics were designed to symbolize Russia’s return to great power status, but subsequent aggression against Ukraine, large-scale corruption, and the doping scandal have become the true legacies of the games. The Kremlin’s style of governance through mega-projects has had deleterious consequences for the country’s development. Placing the Sochi games into the larger context of Olympic history, this book examines the political, security, business, ethnic, societal, and international ramifications of Putin’s system.

Book Putin s Playbook

Download or read book Putin s Playbook written by Rebekah Koffler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Putin’s Playbook is urgently essential reading. A former U.S. intelligence specialist who was born and raised in the Soviet Union explains what Vladimir Putin wants and how he plans to get it. Russia’s ruler is following a carefully devised plan to defeat the United States. Rebekah Koffler came to America as a young woman. After 9/11, she joined the Defense Intelligence Agency, devoting her career to protecting her new country. Now she reveals in chilling detail Putin’s long-range plan—his “playbook”—to weaken and subdue the United States, preparing for the war that he believes is inevitable. With the insight of a native, Koffler explains how Russians, formed by centuries of war-torn history, understand the world and their national destiny. The collapse of the Soviet empire, which Putin experienced as a vulnerable KGB agent in East Germany, was a catastrophic humiliation. Seeing himself as the modern “Czar Vladimir” of a unique Slavic nation at war with the West, he is determined to restore Russia to its place as a great power. Koffler’s analysis is enriched by her deeply personal account of her life in the Soviet Union. Devoted to her adopted homeland but concerned about the complacency of her fellow citizens, she appreciates American freedoms as only a survivor of totalitarianism can. An opportunity to view ourselves and the world through the eyes of our adversary, Putin’s Playbook is a rare and compelling testimony that we ignore at our peril.

Book Vladimir Putin  Russian Leader

Download or read book Vladimir Putin Russian Leader written by Lu Sylvan and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vladimir Putin is making all sorts of headlines right now--unfortunately it seems to be mostly bad press. Learn about Putin's early life, how he became one of Russia's strongest presidents, and what has made him so controversial in current politics. Primary sources with accompanying questions, multiple prompts, timeline, index, and glossary also included. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Book Authoritarian Russia

Download or read book Authoritarian Russia written by Vladimir Gel'man and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia today represents one of the major examples of the phenomenon of "electoral authoritarianism" which is characterized by adopting the trappings of democratic institutions (such as elections, political parties, and a legislature) and enlisting the service of the country's essentially authoritarian rulers. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the mechanisms of its maintenance, and what is its likely future course? This book attempts to answer these basic questions. Vladimir Gel'man examines regime change in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, systematically presenting theoretical and comparative perspectives of the factors that affected regime changes and the authoritarian drift of the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's national political elites aimed to achieve their goals by creating and enforcing of favorable "rules of the game" for themselves and maintaining informal winning coalitions of cliques around individual rulers. In the 1990s, these moves were only partially successful given the weakness of the Russian state and troubled post-socialist economy. In the 2000s, however, Vladimir Putin rescued the system thanks to the combination of economic growth and the revival of the state capacity he was able to implement by imposing a series of non-democratic reforms. In the 2010s, changing conditions in the country have presented new risks and challenges for the Putin regime that will play themselves out in the years to come.

Book Putin   s Totalitarian Democracy

Download or read book Putin s Totalitarian Democracy written by Kate C. Langdon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinism—its tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policy—the authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putin’s totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understand—but not accept—how and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times.

Book Not by Bread Alone

Download or read book Not by Bread Alone written by Robert Nalbandov and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its independence in 1991, Russia has struggled with the growing pains of defining its role in international politics. After Vladimir Putin ascended to power in 2000, the country undertook grandiose foreign policy projects in an attempt to delineate its place among the world's superpowers. With this in mind, Robert Nalbandov examines the milestones of Russia's international relations since the turn of the twenty-first century. He focuses on the specific goals, engagement practices, and tools used by Putin's administration to promote Russia's vital national and strategic interests in specific geographic locations. His findings illuminate Putin's foreign policy objective of reinstituting Russian global strategic dominance. Nalbandov argues that identity-based politics have dominated Putin's tenure and that Russia's east/west split is reflected in Asian-European politics. Nalbandov's analysis shows that unchecked domestic power, an almost exclusive application of hard power, and determined ambition for unabridged global influence and a defined place as a world superpower are the keys to Putin's Russia.

Book Biopower in Putin   s Russia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrey Makarychev
  • Publisher : Central European University Press
  • Release : 2024-08-31
  • ISBN : 9633867509
  • Pages : 193 pages

Download or read book Biopower in Putin s Russia written by Andrey Makarychev and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-31 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Makarychev and Medvedev examine the importance of biopolitics in fueling Russia’s confrontation with the West. In their view, the development of Putin’s illiberal authoritarianism was largely triggered by what they call a biopolitical turn. This shift is exemplified by the use of an increasing number of regulatory mechanisms to discipline and constrain the human body. Such political practices concern issues of sexuality, reproductive behavior, adoption, fertility, family planning, public hygiene, and demography. This turn created a new disciplinary framework for the population and the elite. Bans and restrictions of a biopolitical nature, became one of the main tools for articulating the rules of belonging in the political community and drawing its political boundaries. Biopolitical discourses have taken up the core of the Russian identity formation, which contrasts a positive “conservative Russia” with a supposedly vicious “liberal West.” The presentation of the political genealogy of the body-centric structures of power and hegemony in Russia implies their transformation from bio- to necropolitics. Necropolitical (repressive and life-depriving) components are inscribed in the biopolitical regimes of power: they form the core of Putin’s rule over Russia and are a key factor behind the war against Ukraine.

Book RussiaGate and Propaganda

Download or read book RussiaGate and Propaganda written by Oliver Boyd-Barrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book furthers our understanding of the practice of propaganda with a specific focus on the RussiaGate case. RussiaGate is a discourse about alleged Russian "meddling" in US elections, and this book argues that it functions as disinformation or distraction. The book provides a framework for better understanding of ongoing developments of RussiaGate, linking these to macroconsiderations that rarely enter mainstream accounts. It demonstrates the considerable weaknesses of many of the charges that have been made against Russia by US investigators, and argues that this discourse fails to take account of broader non-transparent persuasion campaigns operating in the election-information environment that are strengthened by social media manipulation. RussiaGate has obscured many of the factors that challenge the integrity of democratic process in the USA. These deserve a much higher priority than any influence that Russia may want to exert. The book concludes that RussiaGate discourse needs to be contextualized with reference to a long-established broader competition between great powers for domination of EurAsia. This pitches the US/European Union against Russia/China and perhaps, ultimately, even the USA against Europe. This book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, propaganda studies, US politics, Russian politics, and International Relations in general.

Book Putin s Reign of Terror the Permanent Revolution in Our Time

Download or read book Putin s Reign of Terror the Permanent Revolution in Our Time written by Christopher Jon Bjerknes and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 16 August 1999, the Duma elected Vladimir Putin Prime Minister of Russia. He faced enormous opposition to his rule. On 26 August 1999, Putin began to attack the Chechen People on the pretext of suppressing the activities of the Islamic International Brigade and in response to the "Apartment Bombings" which Putin blamed on the Chechens, but which were in fact the work of the KGB/FSB. These international terrorists were working for Putin, not against him. Putin rapidly gained the popularity he was initially wanting and used it to elevate himself onto the lofty throne of a new Russian dictatorship. His feet barely reached the ground. Vladimir Putin quickly restored the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union with covert State sponsored terrorism which provided a pretext for ever expanding State powers. Putin took over control of the media and persecuted dissenting journalists, thereby insulating his communist kleptocracy from public scrutiny. Vladimir Putin has used Chechen terrorists as a pretext to invade Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. In Chechnya, Ukraine and Syria, Putin has pitted Chechens against Chechens to intensify the fighting and amplify the destruction. Where the Chechen terrorists go, Putin and the Russian military follow, and occupy. Reconstructing and expanding the Soviet Union as he goes, Putin has since followed the Chechen shock troops he commands all the way to Syria, where they lead ISIS. These same terrorists strike around the world at key moments in the election cycle of Putin''s favored political candidates abroad, candidates who run on an anti-terrorism platform and benefit politically from the terrorism they ostensibly oppose. It is a generally unacknowledged fact that ISIS strikes in regions and at times which benefit Putin''s preferred politicians abroad and at home. This cannot be a coincidence, given the numbers of attacks and their predictable effects on elections. But the author is alone in reporting this obvious fact to the world. Putin and Trump are colluding to subvert and co-opt NATO and change its mission from defending Europe from Russia, to fighting self consuming wars against Muslims -- destroying their countries and the West for the benefit of Russia and Israel. The book exposes the hypocritical role neonazis play in undermining NATO and promoting KGB communist Vladimir Putin, and Putin''s hypocrisy in supporting "fascists" abroad while outlawing Nationalism and anti-Semitism in Russia. It provides a history of the controlled opposition of Libertarianism to Communism, as well as Murray Rothbard''s anti-American Soviet apologetics and Ron Paul''s revealing Russian apologetics. Ayn Rand is exposed as a communist and zionist subversive, and member of the Soviet "Trust". Trotskyite neoconservatives commandeered the Republican Party, and in collusion with Russia and Israel have forwarded the Marxist permanent revolution worldwide with false flag terrorism and endless wars. Given Americans'' reluctance to fight more self-defeating wars against Islam, Putin now carries the torch of Trotsky''s permanent revolution and engages in relentless false flag terrorism. He seeks to turn all of Europe into vassal States serving a new and enlarged Eurasian Soviet Union. The communists are staging conflicts between bolshevik antifa and their neonazi twins so as to destabilize the West to the point of a crisis, at which point the communists will instigate civil wars and invade. The communists never stopped fighting WW II and seek to genocide the German People as an act of revenge and a means to prevent another counter-revolutionary war against Russian bolshevism. There is a large section on the British 2017 general election and the spate of terrorism that took place leading up to it. The Soviets created the modern anti-zionist movement and are using it to promote Muslim immigration to Europe and America, and to drive a wedge between the North Atlantic alliance and Israel, in favor of a Russian-Israeli alliance.

Book The House of Government

    Book Details:
  • Author : Yuri Slezkine
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2017-08-07
  • ISBN : 1400888174
  • Pages : 1128 pages

Download or read book The House of Government written by Yuri Slezkine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 1128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

Book Justice in Conflict

    Book Details:
  • Author : Mark Kersten
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2016-08-04
  • ISBN : 0191082945
  • Pages : 273 pages

Download or read book Justice in Conflict written by Mark Kersten and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when the international community simultaneously pursues peace and justice in response to ongoing conflicts? What are the effects of interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the wars in which the institution intervenes? Is holding perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable a help or hindrance to conflict resolution? This book offers an in-depth examination of the effects of interventions by the ICC on peace, justice and conflict processes. The 'peace versus justice' debate, wherein it is argued that the ICC has either positive or negative effects on 'peace', has spawned in response to the Court's propensity to intervene in conflicts as they still rage. This book is a response to, and a critical engagement with, this debate. Building on theoretical and analytical insights from the fields of conflict and peace studies, conflict resolution, and negotiation theory, the book develops a novel analytical framework to study the Court's effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. This framework is applied to two cases: Libya and northern Uganda. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the core of the book examines the empirical effects of the ICC on each case. The book also examines why the ICC has the effects that it does, delineating the relationship between the interests of states that refer situations to the Court and the ICC's institutional interests, arguing that the negotiation of these interests determines which side of a conflict the ICC targets and thus its effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. While the effects of the ICC's interventions are ultimately and inevitably mixed, the book makes a unique contribution to the empirical record on ICC interventions and presents a novel and sophisticated means of studying, analyzing, and understanding the effects of the Court's interventions in Libya, northern Uganda - and beyond.

Book Misinterpreting Modern Russia

Download or read book Misinterpreting Modern Russia written by Bruno S. Sergi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When President Vladimir Putin ascended to the Kremlin at the end of the 1990s, he had to struggle with the after-effects of Boris Yeltsin's political agenda: outrageous corruption, endless social injustice, and deeply entrenched interests dating back to Gorbachev and beyond. From the outset, Putin saw his task as leveling out the political scenery. Discontent had been building up among ordinary Russians on these consequences of the dramatically unstable 1990s. Stabilization of the political system and cleaning up the widespread corruption were Putin's aims, and the Russian people supported him wholeheartedly. Many observers in the West were quick to condemn Putin and depict him as an authoritarian, dishonest leader who was still linked to the KGB. When asked why Russians were supporting the new Kremlin, many experts explained that it was a paradox that combined the country's supposed history of tyranny and its people's inclination towards it. These explanations shaped the West's understanding of modern Russia and they appear to be unshakeable in cultural circles today. Bruno Sergi argues, in this new study, that the way to know the complete story behind how Putin's presidency has been viewed in Russia, is to examine closely the hard realities that conditioned Putin's policies and responses. Misinterpreting Modern Russia: Western Views of Putin and his Presidency looks beyond the stereotypes to the hard logic of the 1990s, and asks a range of provocative questions about the disintegration of the old Soviet empire and the extraordinary riches that have caused so much opportunity and turmoil in recent years.

Book Kleptopia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Tom Burgis
  • Publisher : HarperCollins
  • Release : 2021-09-07
  • ISBN : 0063236133
  • Pages : 452 pages

Download or read book Kleptopia written by Tom Burgis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • An Economist Book of the Year “A must-read for anyone wanting to better understand what has already happened here in America and what lies ahead if Trump is reelected in November…. A magisterial account of the money and violence behind the world’s most powerful dictatorships.” –Washington Post In this shocking, meticulously reported work of narrative nonfiction, an award-winning investigative journalist exposes “capitalism’s monster”—global kleptocracy—and reveals how it is corrupting the world around us. They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh Desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London. They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power. In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together four stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption: the troublemaker from Basingstoke who stumbles on the secrets of a Swiss bank, the ex-Soviet billionaire constructing a private empire, the righteous Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and the Brooklyn crook protected by the CIA. Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.

Book Big Oil Playground  Russian Bear Preserve Or European Periphery

Download or read book Big Oil Playground Russian Bear Preserve Or European Periphery written by Bjørn Brunstad and published by Eburon Uitgeverij B.V.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Barents Russia" is the far northwestern corner of the Russian Federation, bordering on the Barents Sea and the affluent Nordic countries. It is a region full of natural resources - petroleum, fish, minerals, etc - much of which is yet to be exploited. The region is heavily influenced by the Cold War and 70 years of Soviet central planning, with heavy industry concentrated in "company-towns", and with a strong military presence. The region also houses some serious threats to a vulnerable Arctic environment. The ten past years have brought historic changes in Barents Russia and in the relations between this region and the world around it. Yet, the next couple of decades may bring even more profound changes, the direction of which is hard to predict. Much hangs in the balance, ranging from the supply of oil and gas to the world market to broader political issues such as the future for democracy and the rule of law, the protection of the environment, the integration into world trade and the old favourite topic of the high north - the strategic balance. This book presents three plausible but provoking scenarios for the future of Barents Russia: "Big Oil Playground", "Russian Bear Preserve" or "European Periphery", and will hopefully contribute to increased attention and deeper understanding of the forces and actors that will shape the region. The aim is for the scenarios to provoke new insights about change dynamics, opportunities and challenges, and to serve as a backdrop for public planning, corporate strategy making and more. Book jacket.