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Richard Sakwa (ed.), The Experience of Democratization in Eastern Europe; Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995. Basingstoke: Macmillan, and New York: [...]

Seven years have passed since the Journal of Byelorussian Studies passed away, leaving not so much a gap as a vacuum in the space where scholarly publication on Belarus in [...]

This volume is a part of a series published under the title 'Studies of Communism in Transition' which applies academic analysis to the recent events in Eastern and Central Europe. [...]

Among the few papers that have examined the determinants of inflation dynamics in mainland China, the majority of those that have investigated this matter argue that the traditional Phillips curve does not fit China's data. Some authors, however, conclude that the New Keynesian Phillips Curve does a better job of describing Chinese inflation behaviour in recent decades. This paper conducts an analysis of China's inflation behaviour from the late 1980s onwards by estimating both traditional and new Phillips curves using improved econometric techniques. We find that the New Keynesian Phillips Curve performs poorly in explaining China's inflation behaviour, whereas the traditional ‘old’ Phillips curve does significantly better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay examines how the Ukrainian and Russian government-owned newspapers, Uriadovyi Kurier and Rossiiskaya Gazeta, represent people displaced by the war in Donbas, analysing the political goals revealed by these publications' attitudes towards the displaced. While the Ukrainian publication delimits the nation by distinguishing 'real' internally displaced people (IDPs) deserving help and 'fake' IDPs guilty of siphoning Ukrainian taxpayers' money to rebel-held areas, the Russian paper foregrounds the Russian state's competence in managing displacement while silencing the displaced themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the study of governmentalities of the late twentieth century with regard to the proliferation of computers and information technology. Based on archival materials and oral history interviews, this study reconstructs and analyses the story of Franco–Soviet cooperation in the field of economics from the late 1950s to the 1980s, which was initially motivated by a common interest in promoting planning methods, but was later recast as a dialogue dominated by technical issues of information processing and communication and ultimately became part of a commercial strategy to support the French and Eastern European computer industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the role of peer review in the quality assurance system developed for the regulation of higher education institutions in Russia. Given their negative attitude towards the state's attempts to increase control over universities, how can the participation of academics in regulatory activity be explained? This essay applies resource allocation theory to suggest that engagement in academic service might depend on an individual's performance of their core professional task: research. Results indicate that Russian academics who perform relatively poorly with respect to publications and citations in selective journals are more likely to engage in academic citizenship in the form of inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there is an emerging trans-regional security complex reaching from Russia through Central Asia to China. Shared security norms have resulted in statist multilateralism, that is, state-directed cooperation on shared interests while closely guarding distinct identities and specific political features. The paper outlines member states' key political values and shows how they ‘framed’ shared understandings about security. It then explains how security norms inform the institutional designs of the two main multilateral security organisations thereby directing the nature of cooperation, testing the argument in two key conflicts: in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper considers the extent to which domestic regional policy in the Central East European EU member states has been ‘subsumed’ into cohesion policy approaches. It acknowledges that directions of domestic regional policy change vary with processes of EU policy transfer, adaptation, emulation or resistance. This variation occurs across time and across member states. Crucially, the paper argues that interaction between cohesion policy and national regional policy systems also varies according to different regional policy components. Drawing on research from across the member states, the analysis breaks policy down into a number of key dimensions (objectives, instruments, spatial targeting and governance) and assesses the interaction between EU and domestic approaches and agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper evaluates external factors that shape the establishment of transparent institutions, with a focus on the work of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Azerbaijan. The evidence from Azerbaijan suggests that in hydrocarbon-rich countries, genuine reform can only be achieved through the combined efforts of external and domestic actors. More specifically, the paper argues that transparency promotion from abroad relies on the existence of political accountability and genuine anti-corruption measures in order to work as intended. The case of Azerbaijan illustrates the potential limitations of external remedies to the ‘resource curse’ and emphasises the significance of accountability in political regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The quality of democracy depends on both politicians and citizens. While most attention has focused on politicians, this paper looks at citizens. There has been some scepticism about whether the postcommunist public is prepared to rule their countries. The legacies of communism and the rigours of the transition may have produced citizens whose opinions are unstable and ill-informed and therefore a poor basis for democratic policy making. This paper tests this proposition by considering the nature of public opinion in the Czech Republic. Its main conclusion is that postcommunist public opinion is more reasonable than conventional wisdom suggests. Opinions on most policies change slowly if at all and when they do change the changes are prompted more by gradual shifts in mores than by political manipulation. This suggests that citizens in the region are prepared to have a significant voice in policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at the European Union's impact on corruption in Slovakia, both before and after the country's accession to the European Union. It shows that even though pre-accession channels of influence diminish or disappear, membership brings new means of influence. Our methodology looks beyond institutional changes and explicit anti-corruption mechanisms. Before 1999, the European Union's influence on corruption was close to zero, and between 1999 and 2004, its influence was strong and positive. Post-accession developments are more ambiguous, but despite an apparent worsening of corruption after 2004, we observe a transformation rather than a loss of European Union influence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Youth civic engagement in post-socialist countries and youth enrolment in defending the current regimes or contesting them became a growing topic of research in the 2000s. This essay examines a category of largely under-studied youth social engagement in Russia: patriotic clubs for children, teenagers and young adults. These clubs do not come close to the stereotypes promoted by the state patriotic education programmes. There is a major gap between the activists' patriotic narratives and practices, and those expected by the Kremlin. The first part of the paper investigates the notion of ‘patriotic club’ as a broad umbrella that covers multiple activities and practices. Then it explores their meanings and three of their main functions, as a professional tool on the job market, a source of cultural capital, and a way to develop a depoliticised social engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the origins of Cossack separatism in Kuban' during 1917. It investigates the growing tension between the Cossack caste and the civic universalism of the post-February environment, a setting which increasingly made Kuban' Cossackdom an anachronism, obliging Cossacks to search for a modern alternative group identity superseding the old estate one. The Kuban' Cossacks' answer was to justify Cossacks' estate particularism for the sake of ‘civic unity’ by implementing separatism in the name of ‘self-determination’. The result was the emergence of a Cossack nation-building movement during the civil wars, which pursued the separation of a Cossack state from Bolshevik Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates reverse knowledge transfer of foreign multinational subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary) in the light of the current political and economic transformations of these former communist countries. The study examines whether foreign subsidiaries in the region share their knowledge base with their sister-subsidiaries and parent company, and the role of various factors in this knowledge sharing. These factors include subsidiary initiative, subsidiary autonomy, local dynamism and corporate embeddedness. A proprietary dataset is used for statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The passing of the Russian NGO Law in mid-2006 set clear parameters for Russian NGO activity and civil society development. In this paper we assess the impact of the NGO Law on both NGOs and Russian civil society. Our findings illustrate that the NGO Law has led to a reduction in NGO activity and curtailment of civil society development. We conclude that Russian civil society appears to be dominated by groups funded and thus controlled by the state. This has implications for Russia's on-going democratic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political and economic outcomes depend, in part, on the quality of the officials making policy. Some argue that free elections are the best method for selecting competent officials. Others argue that elections lead to the selection of amateurs and demagogues. We use original data on the biographies of Russian regional governors to examine the backgrounds of elected and appointed governors. Elected governors are more likely to be locals. Appointed governors are more likely to be federal bureaucrats or hold a graduate degree. We conclude the paper by speculating on other possible explanations for variation in governor background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past two decades, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have completed a long transition from authoritarian rule, and joining the EU has been considered to be an indication of the end of the consolidation process. However, this path was anything but linear and in many cases it was marked by concentration and abuse of executive power, a systematic political patronage and a plebiscitary interpretation of democracy. In order to shed light on the meaning of these phenomena, this paper provides for an analysis of democratic consolidation in these countries by way of comparing the cases of Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of ageing on community well-being has been part of the policy discourse in the West, but it is a relatively new problem for the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. This study focuses on the patterns of ageing in rural Romania and Bulgaria, offering a holistic view of vulnerabilities, including persistent rural disadvantages, ageing in the countryside and the post-socialist transformation. Aggregate statistics and community case studies reveal the links between demographic processes and community development. This paper contributes to the country-specific analysis of the ageing European periphery in the context of social cohesion as a fundamental European goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identity of a prisoner's wife is often a shameful societal stigma. Yet Russia's unique history of imprisonment has provided an unusually positive trope for women who have to come to terms with their partners' incarceration: the ‘Decembrist wife’ (dekabristka). This trope originated in the aftermath of the 1825 ‘Decembrist’ uprising—the first anti-monarchist revolt in modern Russian history. A handful of wives of the perpetrators voluntarily joined their husbands in Siberian exile and, in leaving behind families and comforts, created a precedent to be glorified for future generations. Upheld in Russian national mythology as a model of the exemplary wife, the dekabristka identity lives on. This paper examines its enduring power and significance in contemporary Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interpersonal trust in post-communist societies is particularly low, and is often cited as an impediment to democratic consolidation. One way in which countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have tried to build trust is through transitional justice measures, particularly lustration or vetting policies. There is a direct relationship postulated between lustration, transitional justice, and social trust building. This paper tests this assumption by examining the impact of both targeted lustration and broader transitional justice programmes on social trust. The study finds there is a divergent impact of lustration on trust, both building particularised trust in social institutions and undermining generalised interpersonal trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Any meaningful attempt to understand how the Soviet system evolved and ‘worked’ must take into account not only those who conformed ideologically, but also those who actively embraced alternative frameworks of meaning. This paper centres on the experience of a young factory worker, Petr Terekhovich, who, in the mid-1920s, abandoned ‘godlessness’ to devote himself to the charismatic lay preacher, Brother Ioann Churikov, and to a highly ascetic, scripture-based form of sobriety. Drawing largely on archival materials, it seeks to understand Terekhovich's story as a case study of religious struggle, belief and activism, an account of persecution by atheist officials, and ultimately, a narrative of resistance, spiritual freedom and self-determination under Soviet rule. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Asserts that the author did not give Steven Rosefielde the permission to cite unpublished conference papers. Why the author consider Rosefielde's action in the issue particularly annoying; How Rosefielde misuses and misunderstands the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs materials.

This essay examines newspaper narratives depicting model youth in Komsomol'skaya Pravda in the early 1960s in order to cast light on the Party-state's efforts in the Khrushchev years to use the press as a means of re-energising the drive to forge model communist citizens. In contrast to most studies of Soviet media, this study offers a glimpse of the reception of official signals, by drawing on sociological studies that Komsomol'skaya Pravda conducted of its readers in the early 1960s. Throughout, the paper explores recent scholarly discussions of resistance, conformism and agency in the Soviet context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers published in this issue including one by Marianna Pavlovskaya on private property in Russia, one byMartin Sokol on economic policies in Eastern Slovakia and one by Ulrich Ermann on the fashion industry in Ukraine.

While the breakup of Yugoslavia produced divided loyalties and competing claims, leading to the establishment of seven separate states ending with the de facto independence of Kosovo, Crimea was a source of geopolitical instability that threatened to engulf the region in ethnic and geopolitical conflict. As a result of the negotiations during the 1990s and a de facto settlement between Slavs and the Ukrainian state, between Slavs and returning Crimean Tatars, and between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, Crimea has remained a peaceful and even increasingly wealthy area of Ukraine. Reflecting on the case of Kosovo, this paper looks at the prospect for a similar conflict in and over Crimea. Our primary question concerns the degree to which the Kosovo case sheds light on a somewhat similar case of co-ethnics, religious differences and a weakened state. We argue that the greatest source of instability lies not with ethnic claims or geopolitics, but with Ukrainian political and commercial interests that threaten the de facto settlement between the region and the centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political risk—risk that investments are damaged by policy action of authorities—increased during the financial crisis due to controversies about the distribution of accumulated losses among stakeholders. Authorities interconnected by cross-border banks considered unilateral policies that minimised losses for domestic stakeholders at the expense of their foreign counterparts. This is at odds both with the assumption behind financial integration which presumes multilateral responses to cross-border shocks and with the typical definition of political risks that ignores the fact that not only host-country, but also home-country authorities can create such risks. This paper recasts the definition of political risk and reviews instances when political risk materialised within the EU banking market between 2007 and 2011. The analysis reveals that the EU regulatory framework needs to be enhanced to contain resurgent political risks systematically rather than through ad hoc interventions of the EU and international bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although liberalism has been the dominant economic ideology in post-communist Poland, liberal parties have tended to struggle to win political majorities. After winning the 2011 parliamentary elections, Citizens' Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) became the first party in Poland's democratic history to win two consecutive elections. Despite its liberal ideological background, Platforma Obywatelska took a more pragmatic and cautious approach to economic policy, avoiding the introduction of strong austerity economic policies. This paper considers the debate within the liberal camp about Platforma Obywatelska's economic policies, with particular reference to the reform of pensions. It also looks at the plans of the government for more strident liberal economic reforms in its second term, at what impact these will have on the popularity of Platforma Obywatelska and at how this reflects a tension between the party's pragmatic concerns of government and commitment to liberal ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing and intensifying cooperation between China and 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries has generated extensive criticism by and concerns among EU institutions and Western European member states of the Union. According to diplomatic presumptions, China aims to gain political leverage in exchange for economic benefits in the EU through its CEE members. The following article attempts to evaluate the correlation between the quality of bilateral political relations and economic relations of China and CEE countries in order to draw conclusions on the importance or, on the contrary, the irrelevance of Chinese activity in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews the experience of the group Nord-Ost (The Regional Social Organisation for Assistance and Defence of the Victims of Terrorist Acts) as an example of an NGO that has taken a rights advocacy position which has led it into confrontation with the state. Nord-Ost demands the state's accountability for the consequences of its response to the 2002 Dubrovka terrorist attack. Thus, it confronts challenges common to other rights advocacy groups in Russia today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Bosnia and Hercegovina as a prototype of an emerging subset of weak states, the passive-aggressive state. Appearing as the result of agreements ending civil strife, the general characteristics of the passive-aggressive state include complex power-sharing arrangements at the centre and local institutions that are designed for capture by parties to the conflict, which in turn creates a weak and segmented civil society. As a result, only the international community can devise and financially support policy reform, but it must rely on the state to implement the reform. Dependent on international support for its own survival, the centre rhetorically embraces reform while local institutions engage in passive resistance to block it. This article uses three examples of health care reform in Bosnia to illustrate the difficulties of reform in these types of states. The paper concludes with observations on how strengthening the powers of the central government and reorienting international aid towards civil society might alleviate some of the structural problems of passive-aggressive states. passive-aggressive : Of, relating to, or having a personality disorder characterised by habitual passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in occupational or social situations, as by procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, and inefficiency ( American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language , 4th Edition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at "The Mass Media in Post-Soviet Russia" conference is presented. The event attempts to bridge the gaps between political and cultural studies approaches, between textual analysis and audience research to the post-Soviet media. Meanwhile, the paper presented by journalist Nadezhda Azhgikhina offers a unique view of post-Soviet journalism. Likewise, the papers presented by Katja Koikkalainen focuses on the development of business journalism in Russia.