Russian Society on the Threshold of 21 September

The tables presented below for the reader's attention were prepared using materials included in the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) pamphlets titled What Kind of Authoritarian Regime is Possible in Russia? and Russia's Regions: The Population's Economic and Political Orientations,¹ as well as materials from a survey carried out by the foundation in the fall of 1993. The tables are accompanied by brief commentary by POF analysts.     

China in Russia's Foreign Policy Strategy

China has traditionally occupied as important a place in Russia's foreign policy strategy as Russia has in China's foreign policy strategy. The bitter polemics over Russia's national-state interests and, accordingly, various statements by Russian leaders and political figures make studies in this area especially timely today. Some speak of a strategic or pragmatic partnership with the West, others mention simultaneously having a constructive partnership with China or even one opposed to the West.     

Russia: From Energy Villain to Environmental Hero?

Global development of unconventional natural gas sources using hydraulic fracturing techniques has intensified energy security issues and environmental concerns, including freshwater contamination and climate change. Russian energy policy and its natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, have shaped European energy concerns. The discussion presents the goals of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) as a response. It describes Russia's controversial involvement in the ECT process and examines the United States’ role as a worldwide model for shale development. This article finds that Russia's ratification of the ECT presents a good solution for environmental and trade relations problems that Russia and European countries face today.     

Nuclear Deterrence and Proliferation: The Dialectics of "Doomsday Weapons"

The myth of Russia's "special path" can be viewed as a value operator or device for switching between modal planes of social reality and collective consciousness.     

Dissenting Opinion of Justice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine S.L. Vdovichenko Regarding the Decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine No. 34-rp of December 22, 2009 (Case of the Appointment of Judges to Administrative Positions)

Rashid Nurgaliyev, Russia's minister of internal affairs, explains the difficulties of reforming the police in Russia.     

Decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine No. 30-rp of November 26, 2009 (Case of the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada II)

Following the investigation of the police torture in Kazan, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs will develop a new set of criteria for assessing police performance.     

Modernizing Russian Foreign Policy

The author argues that Russian foreign policy should focus not on enhancing Russia's status as a great power but on tapping external resources to facilitate the country's modernization. This means relying on instruments of "soft power" and seeking to integrate with the European Union (EU). It also means promoting a new vision of European security in place of the remnants of the cold war.     

The MVD Will Work on Mistakes

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs admitted that it made a mistake in making radical personnel cuts in the local units responsible for policing the consumer market and for enforcing administrative legislation.     

They Are Giving the Police Three Years

Russia's human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and MVD representatives discuss foreign experience in police reform and new proposals to improve police work in Russia.     

Evolution of the Russian Judicial System in 2014

After the mass protests that took place in 2011–12 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, all of the negative tendencies that have existed in Russia's judicial system became more prominent, while the few positive tendencies have largely disappeared. Acquittal has become even rarer than it already was, even as the courts' tendency to hand down sentences short of incarceration has been reversed.     

Russia at a Historic Crossroads

Khelashvili examines the August war from the Georgian point of view, discussing the dangers the war poses for Russia's long-term geopolitical interests.     

Russia Outside the Security System

This article considers the reasons for and likely trajectory of the confrontation with the West that the Russian government began abruptly in 2014. While Russia's leadership quickly recognized that its confrontational strategy in Ukraine was a strategic mistake, it could not reverse course. As it has continued to escalate the confrontation, it has become hostage to an aggressive policy that cannot end successfully for Russia.     

On Russia's National Wealth : A Discussion

Here we offer our readers some of the presentations made by participants in the first annual Conference on the Assessment of the Value and Management of Russia's National Wealth, which the EastWest Institute held in Moscow. The institute is preparing all the conference materials for publication.     

Russia and Europe—Why We Need Each Other: On Overcoming the Civilizational Divide

Rational organization of state authority is one of the principal conditions for overcoming the total crisis—economic, financial, social, political, cultural, and interethnic—into which Russia has plunged. But for this we need time, we need to improve the country's social climate, and we need to broaden the basis of support for reforms. We must also rid ourselves of the Bolshevik ideology that has weighed heavily on Russia's shoulders for three-quarters of a century.     

Cohabitation in imperial Russia: the case of Lithuania

The main object of this article is to reveal the reasons for cohabitation among Catholics in Kovno gubernia, the biggest administrative district in Imperial Russia's province Lithuania, from the nineteenth to the start of the twentieth centuries. The article also seeks to answer the questions: how widespread was cohabitation in Lithuania, and what were society's attitudes towards cohabitation? The research is heavily built on archive sources. The most important group of them used in this article are the so-called files ‘Trials on Depraved Lifestyles’ (‘Дело о блудной жизни’), documents from the Curia of the Samogitian Diocese from 1813–1915.     

“Execute Not Pardon”: The Pussy Riot Case,Political Speech,and Blasphemy in Russian Law

In February 2012, in the full swing of the then-current presidential campaign in Russia, a short video of the “Pussy Riot” feminist band, beseeching the Virgin Mary to “drive Putin away” while performing a wild dance in front of the altar of Russia's major Orthodox Cathedral, was uploaded to YouTube. The performance was followed by the rapid arrest of three band members and a trial in a criminal court that sentenced them to two years in a penal colony on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and transformed the case into a symbol of the infringement on freedom of political expression in Putin's Russia. Through a legal analysis of the trial materials, this article examines the reasoning used by Russian law to authorize limitations on freedom of religiously contextualized speech and discusses the case's implications for expanding the “forbidden ground” excluded from legitimate public debate in contemporary Russia.     

Law Sidelined

This article discusses how the rule of law is understood in present-day Russia, highlighting the distinction between rule of law and rule by law. It highlights how both international and Russian legal norms were subverted in the Russian Constitutional Court's ruling on the legitimacy of the treaty that authorized Russia's annexation of Crimea.

On the question of the rule of law in the context of Russian foreign policy, or why, according to the law of the Russian Federation, Crimea is nonetheless not altogether ours.     

Toward the privatization of the CIS weapons industry: The ‘collectivist’ option

The Russian military-industrial sector, like the economy generally is undergoing a turbulent transformation. Property rights, institutional arrangements, regulatory mechanisms and procurement demand are in rapid flux. In 1992 weapons production declined drastically, variously estimated between 20 and 67 percent, but arms contracts for 1993 are reported to be double last year's volume. This essay attempts to illuminate key elements of Russia's military-industrial transition by analyzing how property rights, tax and regulatory reforms of the sorts advocated by Alexsandr Isaev and Anatoly Chubais are apt to effect efficiency and military-industrial conversion. It is shown that while collectivist ownership could enhance economic efficiency, despite the usual Ward-Domar effects, Yeltsin's market reforms may not be sufficient to foster large scale military-industrial conversion.     

National-Ethnic Conflicts and the Formation of a Russian State

From the moment of the collapse of the USSR, the central problem of Russian politics has been the question of the formation of a state system. This question is not only of domestic but also of international significance. Russia's status and role in contemporary world affairs depends on what kind of state it becomes.     

Special Characteristics of the Post-Soviet Political Regime

When the editors of Rossiiskaia gazeta asked me to write an article on Russia's future policy toward Asia, they did not catch me completely unawares. I have been thinking about this now extremely complicated problem for a long time. Here I attempt to share my preliminary conclusions. I am not sure that these conclusions are final, but we must initiate a discussion.