New directions in Russian international studies: pluralization,Westernization, and isolationism

The essay argues that Western scholars can improve their understanding of the post-Soviet Russia by studying the discipline of new Russian international relations (IR). The other objective of the essay is to move away from the excessively West-centered IR scholarship by exploring indigenous Russian perceptions and inviting a dialogue across the globe. The essay identifies key trends in Russian IR reflective of the transitional nature of Russia’s post-Soviet change. It argues that Russian IR continues to be in a stage of ideological and theoretical uncertainty, which is a result of unresolved questions of national identity. For describing Russia’s identity crisis, the authors employ Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma defined as a crisis of a larger social acceptance by Russia’s “significant other” (West). The essay suggests that, until this crisis is resolved, much of Russian IR debates can be understood in terms of a search for a national idea. It also introduces the authors of the issue and summarizes their contribution to our understanding of Russian and Western IR.     

Linking national and global population agendas: Case studies from eight developing countries

Human rights advocates have sought to shame the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) into compliance with 'universal' norms. For more than a decade, foreign critics have tried to give the PRC the diplomatic equivalent of a black eye. Proponents of human rights have exposed abuses in the PRC, condemned Beijing in international settings, and protested when PRC leaders travelled abroad, as a way of denying the PRC international prestige. In response, the PRC has issued a sequence of indignant white papers on human rights and has demonstrated a robust capacity to offer gestures of compliance while otherwise resisting pressure to reform. This paper questions whether the effort to shame the PRC leads to enduring improvement in the protection of human rights. It suggests that efforts to shame Beijing arouse indignation born of national pride, coupled with a cultural relativist defence, but that there is little evidence of enduring change. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink's model of socialisation to international human rights norms informs an examination of how progress toward improved human rights in the PRC has 'stalled'. Indeed, absent a viable opposition within China, shaming may not only be ineffective in altering Beijing's behaviour, but also counterproductive.     

Citizenship,Identity and Foreign Policy: The Contradictions and Consequences of Russia's Passport Distribution in the Separatist Regions of Georgia

This article examines the role of Russian passports and citizenship in facilitating Abkhazian and South Ossetian separatism in Georgia. It questions Russian leaders' justification of the country's intervention in the August 2008 South Ossetian crisis on the basis of defending co-nationals' human rights, noting the tenuous circumstances under which citizenship was granted and Russian policymakers' general disregard for human rights among non-ethnic russkii groups both domestically and abroad. The rationale for Russian state actions is placed within the desire for geostrategic gain in the former Soviet Union and the restoration of civic national pride.     

Personality traits and individual feeling of national pride in South Korea

Given the lack of studies on the relationship between personality and national pride, this study represents the first attempt to examine the impact of the Big Five personality traits on individual feeling of national pride in South Korea. The data for this study are obtained from the Korean General Social Survey (KGSS) of 2011 and 2012. The empirical evidence consistently shows that extraversion and agreeableness are significantly associated with individual feeling of national pride. Specifically, people who report elevated levels of extraversion and agreeableness are more likely to display a strong feeling of national pride. Contrary to theoretical expectations, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience are not associated with individual feeling of national pride. Overall, the findings lend some support to the view that personality traits exert a significant influence on individual feeling of national pride and suggest that except for contextual factors, psychological factors also offer some explanatory power for individual feeling of national pride.     

Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas

While accounts of the end of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires have often stressed the rise of Turkish and German nationalisms, narratives of the Romanov collapse have generally not portrayed Russian nationalism as a key factor. In fact, scholars have either stressed the weaknesses of Russian national identity in the populace or the generally pragmatic approach of the government, which, as Hans Rogger classically phrased it, “opposed all autonomous expressions of nationalism, including the Russian.” In essence, many have argued, the regime was too conservative to embrace Russian nationalism, and it most often “subordinated all forms of the concept of nationalism to the categories of dynasty and empire.” Recently, two authors have challenged the predominantly pessimistic portrayals of the extent of Russian national identity in late imperial Russia, focusing on peasant responses to the First World War. Scott Seregny makes a strong case that while peasants may not have been full “Russians” by 1914, the spread of politics and literacy to the countryside through the zemstvos was rapidly integrating peasants into a broader civic identity. Josh Sanborn argues that even though responses were varied and in fact protest against the war quite frequent, the important thing is that both positive and negative responses were expressed within a single national political framework and discourse. In response, S. A. Smith grants that the war strengthened rather than weakened national identity, but thinks Sanborn and Seregny underestimate the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916, concluding that “by the summer of 1917, politics had become polarized between an imperial language of nation, used mainly by the privileged and educated strata, an anti-imperial language, used mainly by the elites of the non-Russian nationalities, and a language of class, used mainly by the subaltern classes.”     

Two variants of the Russian radical right: Imperial and social nationalism

The text combines three lines of discussion. First, on the empirical level two Russian political parties – the CPRF and the LDPR – are characterized with regard to their specific profiles of right-wing radicalism. Second, these profiles are attributed to specific variations of the interpretation of the Russian past. Third, the empirical findings are traced for insights into the Leninist legacy concept. The main hypothesis on the empirical level is that Russian ultra-nationalist actors refer to different currents of a common national imagination in order to combine nationalist ideological elements with other programmatic features. On the conceptual level, the legacy concept is able to render systematic insights not into the history of a given state but into varying interpretations of what can be seen as ‘usable pasts’ from the perspective of various intellectual entrepreneurs.     

Thinking and caring about indigenous peoples’ human rights: Swedish students writing history beyond scholarly debate

According to national and international guidelines, schools should promote historical thinking and foster moral values. Scholars have debated, but not analysed in depth in practice, whether history education can and should hold a normative dimension. This study analyses current human rights education in two Swedish senior high school groups, in classes meant to promote what has been described as conflicting ideals of historical thinking and empathy as caring. Content analysis of students’ exam essays shows intertwined relationships between critical thinking and judgements. The results also highlight how students care that people are treated unjustly; can identify different perspectives; link the past to the present and the future; and use corroboration of information to get the best grade. This analysis shows that the students focus on historical empathy as caring rather than sourcing and corroboration. However, all students combine normative judgements with the complicated act of more neutral perspective recognition in their papers. Evidently, students may combine historical thinking and empathy as caring in line with recommendations of international understanding when they write history about indigenous peoples’ human rights. These findings are significant to all researchers, teachers and decision-makers interested in furthering analytical skills or moral values in education.     

Contextual effects on historical memory: Soviet nostalgia among post-Soviet adolescents

Using an original survey of adolescents in post-communist Russia and Ukraine, this study analyzes attitudes toward the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The results demonstrate how contextual factors – the republic's position within the former Soviet Union and prior history of colonization – affect the level of nostalgia among the young generation. Based upon semi-structured interviews with adolescents, the study identifies sources of positive and negative attitudes toward the Soviet demise. Furthermore, the research reveals cross-national differences in the relationship between Soviet nostalgia and national pride.     

Russian-speaking Belarusian Nationalism: An Ethnolinguistic Identity Without a Language?

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.     

Public Philanthropic Partnerships: The Changing Nature of Government/Foundation Relationships in the US

Relationships between foundations and the government in the United States have long been difficult with government attitudes ranging from hostile to at best indifferent in the past. American foundations have long claimed innovation as a distinctive function to perform in society in order to preserve their legitimacy. One hundred years after the rise of the large-scale American philanthropic foundation, however, the relationships between foundations and government have come into flux. Between demands from fiscally-strapped local governments and a new openness of state and federal governments to develop collaborative relationships, a variety of public-philanthropic partnerships have emerged that question the traditional roles and distribution of labor between philanthropy and the state. This article traces the historical development of the government/foundation relationship and discusses its changing nature using recession-induced ad hoc partnerships, the emergence of foundation liaison offices, and the Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund and Investing in Innovation program as examples.     

Retrenched,but Still Desired? Perceptions Regarding the Social Legitimacy of the Welfare State in Russia Compared with EU Countries

Abstract

This article explores how the retrenchment of the Russian welfare state has affected Russians’ attitudes towards it. Using European Social Survey data, we find that the retrenchment has not eroded Russians’ strong preference for a comprehensive system, despite their dissatisfaction with its outcomes. Further, we find that in Russia, some of the individual socioeconomic characteristics have a different effect on people's attitudes to social welfare compared to equivalent groups in EU countries. Overall, as in the EU, attitudes are multidimensional: a positive stance towards some aspects of the welfare state coexists with a critical approach towards others.     

National and ethnic identifications among the Slovak diaspora in Serbia: stranded between state(s) and ethnicity?

Identity has been treated in relevant literature predominantly as a dynamic, fluid, multidimensional, and ongoing process. Currently, identity is viewed as a process, as something achieved, and as a product of social relations. Scholars have acknowledged that members of minorities and diasporas can have very complex multiple identities, which are both dependent on social context and changeable over time. This article explores the national and ethnic identifications of Slovaks living in Serbia. Its main objective is to examine how the members of the Slovak diaspora identify themselves and what kind of national and ethnic awareness and pride they hold. As well, this paper explores their opinions and attitudes on language and cultural identity. This study used a web-based survey and basic statistics. The results of the explorative study indicate that members of the Slovak diaspora living in Serbia have multiple identities that coexist, do not conflict, and vary in their importance for respondents. Distinct national and ethnic identifications are perceived in different ways and have divergent emotional intensities. This study proposes further research on the importance of civic and ethnic values and on different perceptions of identity, citizenship, length of residency, and minority rights for collective identifications of minorities and/or diasporas.     

“If You Want to Be Russian Go to the United States”

Abstract

The latest and largest group of Russian immigrants arrived in the United States after 1983, when the Soviet Union collapsed. This was the first time in over seventy years that Russia's Jews were allowed to leave Russia. Unlike many other immigrants, this group had lived in a country where little or no contact had been allowed with the outside world. Not unlike Plato's characters living in a cave, the Russian Jews saw the outside world only as it had been portrayed in Russian propaganda. Mistrust of the Soviet regime led to fantasies and confusion about it.

Understanding this group of immigrants requires knowing something of Jewish life in Russia during the last hundred years. In an enclosed, totalitarian, oppressive society, individuals developed character traits that were necessary for survival. Some of these will be discussed in this article. Lack of knowledge on the part of the immigrants as well as on the part of American human services professionals has often led to culture shock for both groups. Misunderstandings, unrealistic expectations, and difficulties with language have caused frustration, anger, and hurt.

Increased cultural knowledge has been necessary to open up communication between immigrant clients and American service providers. Many signs have begun to point the way to different attitudes and greater     

Russian and Ukrainian elites: A comparative study of different identities and alternative transitions

The deterioration in Russian-Ukrainian relations heightened in 2014 but did not begin then and has deeper roots. Both Russian presidents have had troubled relations with all five Ukrainian presidents irrespective if they were described as ‘nationalist’ or ‘pro-Russian.’ This article is the first to explain why the roots of the crisis go deeper and it does this by investigating three areas. The first is the different sources of elites in 1991 when independent Russia captured Soviet institutions and undertook top-down state building while Ukraine inherited far less and set course with bottom up state-building. The second is divergent Russian and Ukrainian national identities. The third is the resultant different transitions with Russia reverting to great power imperial nationalism and Ukraine quadruple and post-colonial transitions.     

Public attitudes toward immigration policies in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether economic or socio-psychological concerns determine anti-immigration attitudes in South Korea, in an effort to address regional asymmetries in existing immigration studies. An analysis reveals that labour market competition and fiscal burden concerns do not affect anti-immigration attitudes, but xenophobia, the conceptual views of citizenship, and the expectation of the impact of immigration on the national economy determine anti-immigration attitudes, a result in keeping with existing studies of anti-immigration attitudes in European or North American countries. However, when policies have humanitarian dimensions, the ethno-cultural views of Korean identity tend to reduce anti-immigration attitudes, a finding that runs counter to the empirical results from studies in the Western context. In addition, multiculturalism appears to affect anti-immigration attitudes when measured in terms of general immigration policies, but not when specific immigration groups are referenced. I conclude by discussing the implications of these new findings.     

A Very Ambiguous Empire: Russia’s Hybrid Exceptionalism

This article will widen existing analyses of Russian imperial narratives through the introduction of the concept of ‘hybrid exceptionalism’, referring to discourses and practices of hierarchy emanating from the country’s liminal position between East and West. In its various—Tsarist, Soviet, contemporary—guises, Russia is posited to have reproduced narratives of hierarchy by formulating civilising missions within a distinct sphere of interest. Transcending political discontinuities, such hierarchical civilising missions have been a defining feature of various Russian worldviews for centuries, and are poised to remain so in the absence of a major redefinition of Russian national identity.     

The Concepts of State and Society in Defining Russia’s Domestic Political Unity: A Research Note

Abstract

Vladimir Putin’s long period in power has so far raised scant discussion about the political concepts that underpin real state and societal unity, and especially about the domestic political implications of these concepts. Despite this, key concepts of his political regime, such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign democracy’, have frequently been used in Russian political discourse. This essay examines the way the current Russian administration has used concepts that stress strong societal unity, and the creation of a stable state and societal unity to support the development of real functioning dynamics in the society. It charts the shift from ‘sovereign democracy’ to ‘sovereignty’ around 2011–2012 as a key discursive concept in moving towards a more isolationist international stand and consolidating Putin’s power by emphasising Russia’s unique political tradition, which requires a strong leader as the basis of national unity and to ensure Russian sovereignty.     

Economic interest or security concerns? Which affected how individuals in five Asian countries—Indonesia,Japan, Malaysia,the Philippines,and South Korea—viewed China in 2013?

With rapid economic growth, China has become its neighbours’ largest trade partner in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the growth of China’s military and its assertiveness are raising concerns among its neighbours that China’s rise will pose a threat to them. In this context, will China’s neighbours—Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Korea—view China positively or negatively? By using statistical analysis, this paper aims to explore whether individuals are more affected by their economic position or national security concerns when they view China. The findings in this article suggest that individuals’ security concerns have stronger associations with their attitudes toward China than economic conditions. Specifically, individuals’ views on China’s military growth and territorial disputes had negative effects on their attitudes toward China. On the other hand, economic interests had weaker associations with individuals’ views of China than security concerns.     

Do Russians see their future in Europe or the CIS?

Historic differences between Russian elites about where the country's future lies are here addressed by examining what the Russian public thinks, using data from the New Russia Barometer survey. More than two thirds see the country's future with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and less than one third see it with Europe. Alternative explanations for these differences are tested statistically. The most important influences making Russians look to the near abroad are traditional identities, national pride and age. Although cosmopolitan contacts of individuals with the West encourage people to be pro-European, Russians are likely to continue to view their world as a CIS space. However, this does not indicate a popular demand to re-establish Imperial dominance but rather a durable commitment among most Russians to a Eurasian rather than European view of the world.