The Politics of International Law in the Post-Soviet Space: Do Georgia,Ukraine, and Russia ‘Speak’ International Law in International Politics Differently?

Abstract

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia have faced the challenge of taking their positions in the politics of international law as part of their transformation processes. Strong dynamics of conflict have shaped these states’ politico-legal actions and interactions, for example, the Russo–Georgian War, the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in East Ukraine. This essay explores whether, how and why Georgia, Ukraine and Russia ‘speak’ international law in international politics differently. It discusses conceptual approaches to empirically analysing the processes of translating political preferences into legal arguments as well as how ‘communicators of international law’ in the post-Soviet region use the language of international law differently.     

A Soviet West: nationhood,regionalism, and empire in the annexed western borderlands

This article considers the role the Soviet Union's western borderlands annexed during World War II played in the evolution of Soviet politics of empire. Using the Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine as case studies, it argues that Sovietization had a profound impact on these borderlands, integrating them into a larger Soviet polity. However, guerrilla warfare and Soviet policy-making indirectly led to these regions becoming perceived as more Western and nationalist than other parts of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine differed in their engagement with the Western capitalist world. Different experiences of World War II and late Stalinism and contacts with the West ultimately led to this region becoming Soviet, yet different from the rest of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet West was far from uniform, perceived differences between it and the rest of the Soviet Union justified claims at the end of the 1980s that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a family of nations.     

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.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

From state socialism to capitalism: The role of class and the world system

While theories of global capitalism have added a new dimension to our understanding of the dynamics of the modern world, a ‘globalisation’ approach to the transformation of the state socialist societies is relatively underdeveloped. This paper studies the role of international and global factors under state socialism and the world system in the pre-1989 period. The paper considers traditional Marxist approaches to the transition to capitalism and criticises the model of state capitalism as well as the world system approach. In contrast, social actors (the ‘acquisition’ and ‘administrative’ social strata and the global political elite)are identified as playing a major role in the fall of state socialism, and were a nascent capitalist class. The transformation of state socialism, it is contended, had the character of a revolution rather than a shift between different types of capitalism.     

Political Police Archives in Ukraine and Georgia: A Research Note

Abstract

After the deluge of archival declassification that took place following the collapse of the Soviet Union, historians of Soviet society, and of the political police in particular, are still denied access to the FSB archives in Russia. However, a combination of political turmoil and military conflict has led to the opening of the entire archives of other Soviet-era political police services. This article will discuss why research into the Soviet political police remains critically important, examine the opening of the archives in Georgia and Ukraine, and explain what these archives contain and how to use them. Finally, possibilities for new areas of research are explored.     

Revolutions: a twenty-first-century perspective

Abstract

We held the ‘Revolutions’ conference in 2017 to commemorate the Russian Revolution and redeem the actual record of revolutions in the Third World for the left. A quarter-century after the demise of the USSR, we found liberal capitalist triumphalism unwarranted. Two of the most important expectations to which it gave rise – that the world had become ‘unipolar’ and that it would enjoy a ‘peace dividend’ – remained unfulfilled. Instead, the world became multipolar and the West, led by the United States, engaged in unprecedented economic and military aggression against countries that contested its power. If this were not enough, social unrest and explosions in the First World as well as the Third underlined the relevance of revolutions. To trace their lineage, we recall capitalism’s intimate relation with revolution. It has needed revolutions to usher it into history and to usher it out. In addition to revolutions against developed capitalism, we also underline how important and necessary revolutions against nascent capitalism in various parts of the world have been. The contributions in this volume explore different parts of this lineage and vivify revolutions for our time.     

Acknowledgement of the Secret Protocol of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact and the Declaration of State Sovereignty by the Union Republics of the USSR

In June 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union established the Commission for Historical and Legal Estimation of the Soviet–German Non-aggression Pact of 1939. In the commission, representatives from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania condemned the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, prompting heated arguments regarding the invalidity of the related secret protocol of the pact with other members who continued to hold the traditional Soviet ideological view of the pact as something positive. The debate over the secret protocol had the further potential to extend to disputes over ‘recovery of lost territory’ amongst the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia. This article analyses the arguments used by commission members, considering the interplay of national interests, how they balanced arguments between restoration of ‘state sovereignty’ and maintenance of borders, and how they finally compromised and concluded the commission's report.     

Internationalisation,global capitalism and the integration of Iran

Abstract

There is a common tendency to observe a process of homogenisation when the current international structure is analysed. However, the globalisation process embraces heterogeneities and contradictions stemming from the integration of different states into a single global structure. This article explores the role and motivations of domestic social classes in creating variations in the form of integration of their states into the global whole. It takes one of the odd cases at the centre of inquiry and particularly concentrates on the emergence of alternative forms to the neoliberal globalisation in the process of Iran’s integration into the global capitalism. The accumulation strategies adopted by the dominant class factions in Iran are investigated in order to reveal their dialectical relationship with the international capitalist structure. Their role in the international political economy of Iran demonstrates how social agents through their strategic activities create variations in the forms of integration into the global capitalism. The article compares the Iranian case to the varieties of integration of lately capitalised but not peripherised BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) states. This aims to reveal that whilst these countries have truly integrated into the global capitalist system, the internationalisation of their states contradicts the accumulation strategies of their dominant classes.     

Between Neoliberalism and Difference: Multiple Practices of Property in Post-Soviet Russia

Two decades of aggressive neoliberalisation in Russia has failed to produce a uniform system of private property and profit-maximising enterprises. Instead, the complex interactions of multiple ‘practices of property’ that are pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet in origin, and not private property alone, have created a diverse economic landscape. Moreover, multiple practices of property have produced both capitalist economies (such as Moscow's early capitalist enterprises) and non-capitalist, ethically guided economies (such as the indigenous enterprises of Arctic reindeer herders). The persistence of alternative economic logics in Russia illustrates the limits of the role of private property in shaping the post-Soviet economy.     

Soviet conspiracy theories and political culture in Ukraine: Understanding Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions

Conspiracy theories in Ukraine draw on inherited Soviet political culture and political technology imported from Russia where such ideas had gained ascendancy under President Vladimir Putin. Eastern Ukrainian and Russian elites believed that the US was behind the 2000 Serbian Bulldozer, 2003 Georgian Rose and 2004 Orange democratic revolutions. The Kuchmagate crisis, impending succession crisis, 2004 presidential elections and Orange Revolution – all of which took up most of Leonid Kuchma’s second term in office – were the first significant domestic threats to Ukraine’s new, post-communist ruling elites and in response Ukraine’s elites revived Soviet style theories of conspiracies and ideological tirades against the US and Ukrainian nationalism. Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko became the focal point against which the conspiracies and tirades were launched because his support base lay in ‘nationalist’ Western Ukraine and he has a Ukrainian-American spouse. The revival of Soviet style conspiracy theories has become important since Viktor Yanukovyc’s election as Ukrainian president in 2010 because this political culture permeates his administration, government and Party of Regions determining their worldview and influencing their domestic and foreign policies.     

Authoritarian governmentality through the global city: contradictions in the political ecology of historical capitalism

Over 30 years of strategic reconfiguration, Global Cities have proven themselves productive of metropolitan oligarchies of various hues that dominate the territories of their respective states. Set against the ‘ecological contradictions’ of historical capitalism, the article presents the Global City formation as a historically particular post-disciplinary technique in the capitalist world-system bound into the ecological contradictions of that system entering into a period of chronic crisis in the twenty-first century. This idiomatic technique is conceptualised in geo-historical terms as a distinct ‘Geotechnic’ modulation of control, through which the Global City is constituted as a geo-machinic assemblage in the historical technics of capitalist civilisation. Through a critical human geography, marxist political economy, and post-structuralist governmetnality studies, the adequacy of the Global Cities research agenda is challenged, and the emerging role of the World-City Archipelago in historical capitalism explored. In a constructive critique of Wolfgang Streeck’s ‘end of capitalism’ thesis, the aim is to present the ‘geotechnic city’ as an emergent modality of global discipline in historical capitalism, whereby the latter’s strategic contradictions are contained, resolved, displaced, sublated through a particular genre of spatio-temporal fix, and the future of the capitalist totality is secured through a new political idiom of metropolitan oligarchy.     

‘Social Distancing’ and Hierarchies of Belonging: The Case of Displaced Population from Donbas and Crimea

Abstract

Following the 2013–2014 protests against then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas, one of the major challenges for Ukrainian society has been the displacement of over two million of its inhabitants. In 2015, at the peak of the displacement, Ukraine found itself among the five countries in the world, after Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Nigeria, with the highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) associated with conflict and violence, and it continues to rank highest in Europe. Very little research has been done to provide a detailed analysis of how internally displaced persons living in Ukraine and outside the country claim and negotiate their belonging in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and the ensuing war. Feeling of belonging is constructed through a relational process of self- and external categorisation and depends on acknowledgement by other members of the chosen group, therefore this essay also examines the strength and regional specificity of the social distancing towards different groups of Ukrainian IDPs.     

China’s road from socialism to global capitalism

Abstract

China’s engagement with global capitalism is driven by the emergence of a statist and private transnational capitalist class. Nevertheless, aspects of China’s foreign policy from the Maoist period still echo today. Consequently, elements of third world solidarity and opposition to Western domination continue to exist as China’s past is redefined to further its transnational strategies in Latin America and the US. The main Chinese investments in South America have been in energy and infrastructure among the left lead countries of the Pink Tide. In the US, Chinese capital has grown despite heated political rhetoric. This paper will examine how economic ties in South and North America reflect past and present conditions, and if China has initiated a non-Western globalisation.     

Putin's Power Revisited: How Identity Positions and Great Power Interaction Condition Strategic Cooperation on Syria

Abstract

This article investigates how Russian foreign policies are shaped in a two-level interactive social game. Russian foreign policies take their cue from ingrained identity positions articulated by the state leadership and negotiated in domestic debates, but they are also informed by interaction with other states. The article explains the shift in Russian policies away from pragmatic cooperation with the West in Syria from autumn 2015 onwards. While the Russian leadership initially sought such cooperation, the prominence of anti-Western discourse in Russia following the crisis in Ukraine as well as the West's rejection of Russia in this period spurred Russia to act independently in Syria.     

The Euromaidan and the crisis of Russian nationalism

This article examines the reverberations in Russia of the Euromaidan protests and the fall of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine. It shows how the events in Kyiv provoked a major crisis in the Russian nationalist movement, which was riven by vituperative denunciations, the ostracism of prominent activists, the breakdown of friendships, the rupture of alliances, and schisms within organizations. Focusing on pro-Kremlin nationalists and several tendencies of opposition nationalists, it argues that this turmoil was shaped by three factors. First, the Euromaidan provoked clashes between pro-Kremlin nationalists, who became standard-bearers of official anti-Euromaidan propaganda, and anti-Putin nationalists, who extolled the Euromaidan as a model for a revolution in Russia itself. Second, the events in Ukraine provoked ideological contention around issues of particular sensitivity to Russian nationalists, such as the competing claims of imperialism and ethnic homogeneity, and of Soviet nationalism and Russian traditionalism. And third, many nationalists were unprepared for the pace of events, which shifted rapidly from an anti-oligarchic uprising in Kyiv to a push for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Crimean and southeast Ukraine. As a result, they were left in the uncomfortable position of appearing to collaborate with the oppressors of their compatriots.     

Russia’s Power Politics in Ukraine and Syria: Status-seeking between Identity,Opportunity and Costs

Abstract

This article looks at Russia’s exercise of power politics in Ukraine and Syria as a way of improving its international status. Russia’s recent willingness to use power and coercion is theoretically counterintuitive as it appears to be in dissonance with the prevalent characterisation of the country as a status-overachieving inconsistent power. We argue that this behaviour is not the result of a consistent weighing of status against capabilities, but rather reflective of both internal and external dynamics. We analyse issues of identity, opportunity and costs as factors that influence Russian foreign action, showing that power politics will not solve Russia’s status-inconsistency problem in the long run.     

Postcommunist divergence: A comparative analysis of the transition to capitalism in Poland and Russia

This article critiques the dominant neoliberal transition paradigm. The implementation of neoliberal reforms in the postcommunist world has fostered the creation of two different types of capitalism. Rather than enabling a transition to Western European-style capitalism, these reforms have produced divergence within the postcommunist world. This article uses comparative firm-level case studies from Russia and Poland to construct a “neoclassical” sociological alternative to neoliberal theory that can explain this divergence. In this account, intra-dominant class structure (the pattern of alliances between the Party bureaucracy, the technocracy, and humanistic intellectuals) at the time of the transition produces different “paths to capitalism,” or policy regimes, which, in turn, have different effects on the ability of firms to restructure. In Russia, this creates a system of “patrimonial capitalism” that will produce long-term economic stagnation. In Poland, a variety of modern rational capitalism emerges. This latter system is distinguished by its very high levels of dependence on capital imports in comparison to the advanced capitalist countries. As a result, this type of economy will be quite vulnerable to economic shocks. Lawrence King is an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University. His book includeThe Basic Features of Postcommunist Capitalism in Eastern Europe (2001) andAssessing New Class Theory (with Ivan Szelenyi, forthcoming). He is currently working on a book entitledPostcommunist Capitalisms. I am grateful for a Yale Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, and the support of the Yale Center for Comparative Research, the Social Science Research Fund at Yale, and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. I would also like to thank Aleksandra Sznajder and Evgenia Gvozdeva for their invaluable research assistance, and Ivan Szelenyi, Andrew Schrank, Hannah Brueckner, Alison Pollet, and the editors and anonymous reviewers atStudies in Comparative International Development for their comments and suggestions.     

Debating Capitalist Dynamics and Unfree Labour: A Missing Link?

Abstract

Examined here are recent contributions to an important and longstanding debate in political economy, about the link between capitalist development and the employment of unfree labour. These contributions maintain that, because Marxist theory failed to understand the centrality of unfreedom to modern capitalism, a new explanation of this link is needed. However, it is argued here that many of these new characteristics are in fact no different from those identified earlier by Marxist theory. The exclusion of the latter approach from the debate is thus unwarranted.     

The Politics of the Past in Dagestan: National Unity and Symbolic Revolt

Abstract

Dagestan is inhabited by numerous ethnic communities with their own languages, cultures and histories. However, despite its ethnic and cultural diversity, the republic’s authorities have consistently sought to promote a unified concept of Dagestani identity. This policy has been challenged by local ethnic nationalists concerned about the future of their ethnic communities, which they saw as being endangered by assimilation and marginalisation. This struggle to secure political and social benefits began in the Soviet period and reached its height in the early 1990s. Resentment was particularly widespread among the Kumyks and Lezgins. Their dissatisfaction with the status quo resulted in a competition between inclusive (national) and exclusive (ethnic) approaches, which in turn manifested themselves in debates over historiography. This essay analyses the development and outcomes of this struggle from the 1950s through to the early 2000s, with an emphasis on the early 1990s.