Contemporary Russian liberalism

This article analyzes contemporary Russian liberalism through the prism of competing trends of moderate pluralist and monistic radical thought. The author focuses particularly on the pluralist trend, less well known in the West, arguing that its prospects are more promising over the long term. Ideological and tactical differences within the liberal camp in Russia are compared with those in the West, both for the purpose of emphasizing that such differences are not unique to Russia and to show the connections between Russian and Western strands of liberal political thought.     

Oligarchs,megafarms and land reserves: understanding land grabbing in Russia

This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of ‘investor’ countries, nor in the category of ‘target’ countries. Russia has large ‘land reserves’, since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or even unpopulated. With rapid economic growth, capital of Russian oligarchs in search of new frontiers, and the 2002 land code allowing land sales, land began to attract investment. Land grabbing expands at a rapid pace and in some cases, it results in dispossession and little or no compensation. This paper describes different land acquisitions strategies and argues that the share-based land rights distribution during the 1990s did not provide security of land tenure to rural dwellers. Emerging rural social movements try to form countervailing powers but with limited success. Rich land owners easily escape the implementation of new laws on controlling underutilized land, while there is a danger that they enable eviction with legal measures of rural dwellers. In this sense Russia appears to be a ‘normal’ case in the land grab debate.     

俄罗斯政府职能演变下的预算制度改革

向市场经济的转轨使俄罗斯政府职能发生了根本性的转变,政府调控经济的工具也由计划经济时期的指令性计划、行政管制和所有权控制转变为公共预算。社会经济转型中出现的一系列社会矛盾和冲突,如社会公平、环境污染、医疗教育、社会保障等,都需要通过预算加以解决和保障。在这种情况下,实行预算制度改革,建立新的预算机制成为俄罗斯近年来政治经济改革的全新热点和中心。     

地缘政治视角下的美俄中亚博弈——兼论对中国西北边疆安全的影响

随着国际能源供给的日趋紧张和能源价格的飙升,世界大国对能源的依赖也日显突出。能源资源储有量十分丰富的中亚地区,其地位和重要性也在世界能源供给的新形势下进一步得到确认,大国对该地区的争夺渐呈白热化。美俄之间在中亚地区的争夺主要表现在三个方面:一是石油与天然气资源的控制权之争;二是石油与天然气运输线之争;三是对该地区军事主导权的争夺。俄美之间的争夺与斗争,不仅威胁中亚地区政治稳定,也给中亚相邻地区和国家、特别是我国西北边疆地区带来安全隐患。中亚地区国家只有积极开展经济一体化合作,增加相互信任和共同利益,才能使大国无机可乘,才能使该地区经济在安全轨道上健康发展。     

21世纪初俄罗斯有组织犯罪的特征

俄罗斯有组织犯罪的发展已经达到成熟阶段,进入21世纪以后有组织犯罪集团实施的犯罪数量每年都超过20000起,对整个国家的经济、政治安全造成很大危害.俄罗斯有组织犯罪集团族裔化特征明显,有些犯罪集团同恐怖主义相结合,形成更大的威胁.     

俄罗斯弥赛亚意识的结构及其流变

弥赛亚意识是俄罗斯民族思想的主旋律之一,它具有深厚的宗教基础、充分的哲学阐释、极至的文学体现、有效的经济保证和强大的政治依托.在宗教层面,俄罗斯曾自诩是正宗基督教的继承人和拯救者;在精神层面,俄罗斯相信其民族的文化思想是拯救世界的精神武器;在政治层面,俄罗斯曾试图解放全人类;基辅罗斯、鞑靼罗斯、莫斯科罗斯、彼得堡俄罗斯、苏联以及后苏联时期分别彰显出不同的层面和特点.     

History and Culture in Russia and Ukraine: How to Complicate a Crisis of European Security

Russia’s annexation of Crimea was a major blow to the post-World War II security order in Europe and could well be the start of a new Cold War. This is especially the case since it was followed by the initiation of a proxy war in eastern Ukraine. The two works reviewed here deal the current crisis and provide historical background. Although there are actual concrete “national interests” involved in the Russian-Ukrainian relationship, the differences in how history is remembered complicates any attempt at resolving the issues.     

How Russia's Internet Research Agency Built its Disinformation Campaign

In this article we analyse features of the information influence operations run by the St. Petersburg based Internet Research Agency, targeted at Europe. Informed by publicly available ‘open source’ data, the analysis delineates three key tactics that underpinned their disinformation campaign: account buying; ‘follower fishing’; and narrative switching. Both individually and collectively these were designed to build the reach, impact and influence of the ideologically loaded messages that social media account operators authored and amplified. The particular value of the analysis is that whilst a lot of recent public and political attention has focussed upon Kremlin backed disinformation in respect of the 2016 United States presidential election, far less work has addressed their European activities.     

CHANGE AND DISCONTINUITY: WAR AND AFGHANISTAN, 1904–1924

In the imaginations of many, war in British India had its focus on the North-West Frontier and was fought against the tribes of that region. However, British thinking about Indian defence involving Afghanistan underwent tremendous change over the period under consideration. British plans to meet a Russian invasion on the Kabul-Kandahar Line in 1904 resembled those of any other Nineteenth Century Imperial campaign, with numbers of infantry and cavalry still being thought of and referred to as bayonets and sabres. Twenty years later, heavily influenced by the experiences of the Great War in the region and the Third Afghan War and associated operations, the calculus was different with logistics changed by motor vehicles and the introduction of what today are referred to as force multipliers, such as aeroplanes and machine guns. It was over this period that warfare as fought and conceptualised by men like Napoleon gave way to modern practices familiar to us today.     

Ethnicity and electoral manipulation in Russia

To what extent does electoral manipulation follow ethnic lines in Russia? Using an original dataset based on raion-level data, we find that the “ethnic component” of electoral manipulation is more nuanced than previous studies have suggested. Electoral manipulation was most prevalent in majority-minority raions across ethnic and non-ethnic as well as richer and poorer regions. We argue that concentrations of ethnic minorities provide: (1) greater incentives for electoral manipulation by the central state and regional elites in order to signal political dominance and (2) greater capacity to carry out electoral manipulation through networks of local co-ethnic elites. However, multilevel analyses suggest that the extent of electoral manipulation was also strongly contingent on regional context. Electoral manipulation was significantly higher in the more politically volatile Muslim regions, while socioeconomic differences among regions, by contrast, had no discernible effect.