Cultural Identities of Adolescent Immigrants: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study Including the Pre-Migration Period

This article investigates the cultural identities of adolescent immigrants in the pre-migration period and during the first 3 years after immigration. The target population consists of high-school Jewish adolescents from Russia and Ukraine participating in an Israeli immigration program. In this program, Jewish adolescents immigrate to Israel without their parents, live in kibbutzim and boarding schools, and study in Israeli schools. Participants filled out questionnaires four times: half a year before their departure from the homeland and once a year for three consecutive years after their arrival to Israel. Changes in the cultural identities during immigration were curvilinear. Three stages were distinguished: devaluation of the homeland and idealization of the country of immigration in the pre-migration period, disillusionment with the receiving country and strengthening of the homeland cultural identity in the first year after immigration, and the formation of an inconsistent bi-cultural identity in the later post-migration period. Throughout the entire post-migration period, immigrants’ attitude towards the receiving country was more positive than their attitude towards their homeland; however, immigrants’ sense of belonging to the homeland was stronger than their sense of belonging to the receiving country. Pre-migration cultural identities and perceived discrimination in the receiving country predicted post-migration cultural identities of immigrants. Immigrant adolescents from ethnically homogenous Jewish families had a less positive attitude towards Russia/Ukraine, a more positive attitude towards Israel, and a weaker sense of belonging to Russia/Ukraine as compared to immigrants from ethnically mixed families.

Nomads under arrest: The nation-building and nation-destroying of Kalmyk nomads in Russia

Nomads are positioned outside of the modern conception of nations, which is based on a traditional or modern hierarchical model (Kuzio, 2001) which tends to “dehistoricize and essentialize tradition” (Chatterjee, 2010: 169). Using an analysis of the narrative construction of nomadic Kalmyk nationhood, particularly through historiography and culture, this article demonstrates that in spite of nation-destroying efforts from the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, the Kalmyk nation has been flexible with reinventing cultural strategies in charting the nomadic national imaginary from Chinggis Khan to the Dalai Lama. It argues that nomadic nationhood contains a deeply imaginary response to nomads’ cultural and intellectual milieu which provided a way of freeing itself from Tsarist and Soviet modular narratives of national imagination, demonstrating how nomadic nationhood exists as a non-modular form of nationhood.     

Russia’s Neorevisionist Challenge to the Liberal International Order

Abstract

A conventional opinion is that Russia is trying to destroy the liberal international order. Russia indeed defies it, but also justifies its foreign policy with the liberal order’s normative frameworks and reproaches the West for not standing up to these norms. Moreover, Moscow does not present any alternative vision. Russia complains about the internal contradictions of the liberal order: sovereignty vs. intervention, pluralism vs. universality, US hegemony vs. equality and democracy, although it also exploits these contradictions. In fact Russia demands an adjustment of the liberal order rather than its eradication and should, therefore, be classified as a neorevisionist power. Two elements underlie Russia’s at times aggressive foreign policy conduct. The first one, its feeling of being ill-accommodated in the present order, predefines the direction of the policy. The second, the prioritisation of foreign policy over domestic reforms, explains the intensity of Russian discontent and its occasional aggressive manifestations. Russia’s domestic consensus regarding its foreign policy, including views on the liberal international order, facilitates this aggressiveness. Three policy conclusions can be drawn: acknowledging that Russia uses the inherent contradictions of the liberal international order opens up possibilities for dialogue and an eventual overcoming of the crisis; the survival and strengthening of the liberal order depends on its embrace of all major players, including Russia, and hence, the need for some adjustments to the order itself; and finally such adjustments presuppose Russia’s readiness to shoulder responsibility for the (reformed) liberal international order.     

Russia as a Gravity Pole of the GCC’s New Foreign Policy Pragmatism

Abstract

Despite the obvious differences over the Syrian crisis and Iran, the GCC countries do not seem to be distancing themselves from Russia politically. To a large extent that is due to Russia’s growing military role (in Syria) and military cooperation (with Iran), as well as the diminishing role of the United States under Obama. Having accepted the situation in Syria (after the fall of Aleppo) as a fait accompli, the GCC’s elites seem to be looking at Russia as a powerful player able to reduce the scope of Iran’s expansion in the region. Their approach involves a carefully established mechanism of economic interaction exploiting Russia’s need for GCC finances and arms acquisitions.     

“Glory to Breivik!”: The Russian Far Right and the 2011 Norway Attacks

This article documents Anders Behring Breivik's reception on the Russian far Right, with a comparative view to Western Europe. On July 22, 2011, Breivik carried out two terrorist attacks in Norway, killing 77 people. Based on a variety of open sources, the article finds that Breivik has received much more open support in Russia than in Western Europe. I suggest there are three main reasons why Russia stands out. First, a weaker social stigma attached to Right-Wing extremism reduces the cost of publicly embracing Right-Wing terrorists. Second, higher levels of violence in Russian society increase desensitization and violence acceptance. Third, the embrace of Breivik fits into a vibrant tradition of iconizing Right-Wing militants on the Russian far Right. The article highlights Russia as a hotspot of Right-Wing extremist activism in Europe. It also provides insights that may prove useful in future comparative research on cross-national variation in Right-Wing violence and terrorism.     

Collective learning and regime dynamics under uncertainty: labour reform and the way to autocracy in Russia

The article questions the structural approach to autocratic transition that sees government as knowingly and purposely building autocracy, and contributes to the tradition emphasizing the plurality of possible regime developments and the role of contingency therein, by providing a more systematic treatment of such contingency. We offer a path-dependent theory of political change and use insights from cognitive institutionalism to show how ad hoc policy reform practices become accepted as a trusted way of interaction by political actors and how they “learn” their way into autocracy. This intuition is substantiated with a case-study of the labour reform in Putin’s Russia. The early 2000s marked a surge in uncertainty in Russian politics caused by the succession crisis and the profound political turnover it triggered. This uncertainty could have resolved in a number of ways, each leading to a different political development. We trace the actual way out of this uncertainty and show that the major factor to condition further regime trajectory was the way social reforms were conducted. The course of these reforms determined the ruling coalition and the institutions that ensure credible commitment within its ranks (the dominant party), and contributed to crowding out the political market and opposition decay.     

Biopower and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?

In this article, we address geopolitics and biopower as two different yet mutually correlative discursive strategies of sovereign power in Russia. We challenge the dominant realist approaches to Russia’s neighborhood policy by introducing the concept of biopolitics as its key element, which makes analysis of political relations in the post-Soviet area more nuanced and variegated. More specifically, we address an important distinction between geopolitical control over territories and management of population as two of Russia’s strategies in its “near abroad.”     

Whose legitimacy? The EU and Russia in contest for the eastern neighbourhood

The impact of external actors on political change in the European neighbourhood has mostly been examined through the prism of elite empowerment through externally offered incentives. The legitimacy of external policies has received less scrutiny, both with regard to liberal powers promoting democracy and illiberal powers preventing democracy. This article investigates the conflicting notions of legitimate political governance that underpin the contest between the European Union (EU) and Russia in the Eastern neighbourhood. It proposes four mechanisms of external soft influence that take into account the EU’s and Russia’s actorness and the structural power of their norms of political governance, and consider their effects on domestic actors and societal understandings of appropriate forms of political authority. It finally traces the EU’s and Russia’s soft influence on political governance in Ukraine. It maintains that through shaping the domestic understandings of legitimate political authority and reinforcing the domestic political competition, the EU and Russia have both left a durable imprint on Ukraine’s uneven political path.     

Digital media and political opposition in authoritarian systems: Russia’s 2011 and 2016 Duma elections

The ability of authoritarian regimes to maintain power hinges, in part, on how well they are able to manipulate the flow of information to the masses. While authoritarian states have had success controlling traditional media, the growth of social media over the last decade has created new challenges for such regimes. The Russian experience offers an example of how an authoritarian regime responds to this potential threat. Because of the massive demonstrations surrounding the 2011–2012 Duma elections, the ruling Russian government suspected that social media provided a significant impetus for the demonstrations. Social media, through its dissemination of opposition blogs, could have helped drive negative attitudes about the governing party. As such, the government responded by employing strategies to tighten their grip on the digital flow of information. We use survey data to demonstrate that exposure to blogs via social media at the time of the demonstrations led many to believe that the elections were fraudulent. Ultimately, we contend that Russian fears concerning the importance of social media for the fomenting of opposition movements is well grounded. Social media can drive support for opposition in an autocratic state.     

Elite recruitment and state-society relations in technocratic authoritarian regimes: The Russian case

This article argues that Russia has a peculiar form of authoritarianism that exhibits pronounced technocratic features. The analysis places in a comparative frame the bases of regime legitimacy and the paths to political, administrative, and economic power in Russia. By locating the Russian state in a matrix that considers the ideology of governance on one axis and the backgrounds of elites on the other, the article highlights areas of overlap and separation between state–society relations in Russia and other regimes in the developed and developing world. It also illustrates the ways in which technocratic elites in Russia differ from their counterparts in other parts of the world.