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The paper identifies several Russian visions of future relations with Ukraine and Western nations from the mid-term perspective. Russian scholars and foreign policy analysts have debated several scenarios of future relations that can be defined as a long war, a hostile coexistence, and a renewed peace. While not entirely exclusive, each has its own internal logic and is driven by distinct forces. The paper reviews writings and commentaries by Russian thinkers as reflective of the identified scenarios by analyzing and comparing their arguments. From the Russian perspective, a stable peace is only possible by addressing issues of values, security, and economic and political relations among Russia, Ukraine, and Western countries. An analysis of Russia's internal discussions presents an opportunity to understand the diversity of the country's reasoning about future international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A careful evaluation of recent history illustrates that the claim that US and NATO expansion threatens Moscow's existence is an exaggeration. That Russia would inflate fears of NATO to pursue its global aspirations is understandable. What is less comprehensible is the degree to which influential Western thinkers, particularly on the anti-imperial US left, have promoted this narrative. This paper will examine the work of prominent US anti-imperial leftists who view the Russo-Ukrainian war through a US-centric lens, a conceptual framework that distorts the historical record. It will first document how these commentators' explanatory models give outsized attention to US maneuvers, while neglecting regional fault lines, Russian irredentism and historical nuance. Consequently, many US anti-imperial leftists conclude that the US/NATO alliance is to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This paper will explore Russia-NATO interactions and Moscow's imperial discourse to demonstrate that the blame NATO stance obfuscates the historical record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the discourse of the Russia-Ukraine war to outline and tentatively characterize the dominant narrative schemas anchored in the spatial geopolitical representations of globalness and localness. It employs a collection of analytical tools from the domains of critical cognitive discourse studies and narrative research to distinguish between two apparently most salient schemas: the Global Conflict Reality (GCR) narrative and the Local Conflict Reality (LCR) narrative. The GCR narrative conceptualizes the Russia-Ukraine war as a growing international conflict, extremely likely to produce serious political, economic and, not least, material consequences for the global community. GCR uses an emotionally charged coercive rhetoric to call for immediate political and military measures to support Ukraine so the war can be stopped before it spreads beyond its current borders. The principal narrator of GCR is the state of Ukraine itself, though the narrative is re-contextualized in a variety of other countries located in geographical proximity to the conflict, such as Poland and other states of Central Europe. In contrast to GCR, the LCR narrative, performed mostly by the Kremlin, construes the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an essentially local affair (merely a 'special operation' conducted by Russian forces) providing no legitimate reasons for foreign intervention. Involving fewer explicit ploys used for threat generation and public coercion, LCR is distinctive for its large number of sub-narratives appropriated for different geopolitical audiences, which include not only the Russian and the Ukrainian people, but also specific audience groups in the West and the Global South. Altogether, the inherent complexity of both narratives, and the process of their re-composition in the global discourse space requires further studies, focused not only on their conceptual design but on strictly linguistic features and lexico-grammatical markers of the GCR/LCR status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2011 and 2016, the Kremlin altered its strategy to maintain elite coherence and shore up social support. The papers presented in this volume argue that these changes in formal rules, informal practices, state policy, and ideational narratives constituted a second authoritarian turn since 2000. In comparison to the first regime shift in the mid-2000s this strategic change combined tactics designed redefine the Kremlin's core support and construct electoral majorities that could deliver victories in the 2016 national parliamentary election and the 2018 presidential election. While the outcome of the 2016 election suggests overwhelming regime success, these papers raise important questions about the long-term efficacies of these strategies, their unintended consequences, and the contradictions that are evident in social attitudes. In the context of the growing literature on contemporary autocracy, these papers present a strong case for increased focus on social attitudes and behaviors as well as the ideational and informal elements of the state's mechanisms to maintain regime stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a new interpretation of the evolution of legitimacy in Russia based on two pillars: the sociological tradition of legitimacy research, and David Easton's typology. In this regard, the political process in Russia can be perceived as a conflicting coexistence of various legitimacies. The very conflicting variations begin to prevail in the public consciousness at certain stages of modern Russia existence, not forcing out each other completely. The trends that prevailed in the definition of Russian statehood allow us to distinguish three stages in the legitimacy evolution, which conditionally correspond to each decade of the existence of modern Russia: the "ideological" stage (90s-00s) and the "structural" one (00s-2012). We define the contemporary period as "personal" that emerged after 2012. The current political crisis in Russia is interpreted as a conflict of "structural" and "personal" legitimacy, that is unfolding against the backdrop of attempts by the authorities to compensate for the lack of trust, with technologies of "quick" self-legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the 2000s Russian elections have become increasingly unfree and unfair, characterized by suppression of electoral competition, rising levels of administrative interference and drastic growth of electoral frauds. In this paper I propose that the pattern of fraudulent elections in Russia can be explained by combining an idea about federalism with a game-theoretic model of the relationship between the Kremlin and a single regional governor. Specifically, election fraud becomes a basic signaling mechanism of regional bosses' loyalty and of their ability to control the administrative resources to the Kremlin's benefit. If electoral signaling occurs, data manipulation is most likely to take place with 0s and 5s in the last digit of rounded percentages of turnout and electoral support, which is the easiest and most readily detected way to report basic information to superiors. Based on the Russian electoral and financial data for 2000-2018, my analysis shows strong evidence of election fraud associated with the post-electoral interbudgetary transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how urban Russians perceive, negotiate, challenge and reaffirm the political configuration of the country and leadership in terms of the 'imagined nation'. Based on around 100 interviews in three Russian cities, three main pillars appear to prop up the imagined 'pro-Putin' social contract: (i) the belief that 'delegating' all power into the hands of the President is the best way to discipline and mould state and society; (ii) the acceptance of Putin's carefully crafted image as a 'real man', juxtaposed against negative views of the Russian 'national character'; (iii) the internalization of a pro-Putin mythology on a 'government of saviors' that delivers normality and redeems a 'once-ruined' nation. The paper shows that those who reject these pillars do so due to differing views on what constitutes 'normality' in politics. This normative split is examined over a number of issues, leading to a discussion of internal orientalism and the limited success of state media agitation in winning over the skeptical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's republics – regions in the larger federation that are territorially defined and represent areas where non-Russian ethnic populations are concentrated – have been generally quiescent during the two decades of Vladimir Putin's leadership. However, in 2019 Kalmykia was the site of protests against leadership changes in which locals had scant political voice. This paper focuses on the demonstrations in Kalmykia and provides a detailed account of the associated causes, motivations, and outcomes. The protests augur an increased awareness of the double marginalization of Russia's minority groups, both politically and on the basis of nationality, in the country's governance. This condition has notable implications given Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the resilience demonstrated by the international system when confronted by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The author argues that this resilience might not be sustainable and that in the mid-term perspective we might observe some explicit disintegration in the system that affects multilateral institutions, international public law, and the global governance at large. Four independent variables are important in shaping the future world order: the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian and the Russian-Western confrontation, the dynamics of the US-China relations, the sustainability of Western cohesion, and the prospects for a new cycle of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ukraine's aspirations for NATO membership have been a source of contention between Russia and Ukraine for decades. At the same time, domestic debates in Ukraine on relations with NATO have also been a divisive issue for Ukraine's ruling political elites. These conflicts culminated in 2022, when Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine claiming that its movement towards NATO was an existential threat to the Russian state. This paper summarizes some of the results of my longitudinal research of ruling elite discourse on NATO in Ukraine between 1997 and 2018. It focuses on the changes in national identity discourse and contestation, pinpointing their constitutive role for Ukrainian foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper recounts the lived experiences of internal migrants in the Russian Federation, specifically those who have moved from the Republic of Kalmykia in the country's southwest to the capital of Moscow. Recounting exposure to racism and xenophobia, challenges in the housing and employment markets, and negotiating an evolving city, informants offer grounded interpretations of migration within contemporary Russia. In part, the conversations that inform this paper focus on the everyday experiences of Kalmyk migrants in Russia and in turn aim to fill a gap in the existing academic literature on internal migration in Russia. Most migration in Russia is internal, yet we know relatively little about the diverse nature of the experiences of these migrants at their destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments on Nicholas Timasheff's arguments on the role of freedom in the history of Russia presented in his paper "Free Institutions and Struggle for Freedom in Russian History". It states that the dichotomy despotism-freedom which provides the conceptual framework for Timasheff's arguement in the paper is valid in itself for he wrote the paper in U.S. for an American audience. It further comments on the historical developments or free institutions including the veche and the sobors.

The twenty-year period of modernization of the Russian economy under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, prior to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was characterized by a consistent trend towards a statist domestic orientation, coupled with an increasingly radical policy of financial openness. Despite numerous domestic economic reforms, which were oriented towards free-market principles, being either reversed or significantly altered, foreign economic policy reforms proved to be more enduring. In this paper, I argue that the differential outcomes along the axis of internal and external economic reforms are interrelated. The absence of a robust rule of law domestically enabled the reversal of privatization reforms, but also made financial openness policies more appealing to political elites. Furthermore, the society's expectation of welfare paternalism enabled the regime to tolerate the negative aspects of greater integration by relying on distributive policies rather than widespread repression. In contrast, I demonstrate that the inheritance of a less developed welfare state and an over-reliance on repression led the Chinese Communist Party to adopt a more cautious approach towards financial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to identify the major barriers to the implementation of the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation (2017) and to uncover ways of facilitating the Agreement that may enhance Russia–Japan scientific cooperation in the High North. The Russia–Japan case exemplifies the difficulties as well as the potentials of the Agreement in enhancing Arctic scientific cooperation between Arctic states and non-Arctic states. Ultimately, the study identified several possible ways to facilitate the Agreement's implementation. This paper first examines these means within the Agreement's legal framework; more specifically, it explores how to operationalize the effective review process established under Art.12, utilize the 2000 Japan-Russia bilateral Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement to implement Art.17 on 'Cooperation with non-Parties', identify Arctic research projects and infrastructure available under the Agreement, and designate appropriate authorities as contact points under Annex 2 of the Agreement. The paper then examines the potential of linking the Agreement's implementation with other forums and institutions. In particular, it recognizes the Arctic Council as a platform for enhancing Arctic scientific cooperation and considers how cooperation within various Arctic professional organizations and associations may be revived and how to create synergy between the Agreement and Arctic Science Ministerial processes. This paper's discussion is largely based on information and political contexts before February 24, 2022, but the concluding section provides a few policy suggestions specific to the implementation of the Agreement in light of the post-Ukraine situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trans-Volga Lithuanian diaspora has for more than 150 years traversed the challenges of assimilation into a majoritarian Russian society. However, in the contemporary era, the third- and fourth-generation descendants' resilience to assimilation is focused on sensitivity to roots and a valorisation of the diasporic past. The role of agency in diasporic memory, place-making and cultural representations is of key importance. The aim of this paper is to focus on the post-diasporic domains of communality by highlighting the shared values and aspirations, strategies and experiences of the reclamation and heritagisation of diasporic legacy. Analysis of fieldwork among the descendants has shown that their resilience to assimilation is grounded in the dominant narrative of the heroic past of the diaspora firstcomers: in terms of—Lithuanians as pioneers of the Kazakh steppe; in the heritagisation of Lithuanian objects and places via collection and museumisation of ethnographic objects, and co-memorising; the re-Lithuanianisation of diaspora places through erecting Catholic chapels and crosses; and in the festive representations of traditional Trans-Volga Lithuanian culture at state-sponsored local multicultural festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the implementation of the right to adequate housing in Brazil, China, and Russia, which are part of the BRICS group of countries. The study reveals that while Brazil and Russia have legally recognised the right to housing through domestic law and multinational human rights treaties, China has been less willing to do so. Even when international instruments have been implemented, they have not always successfully ensured state accountability for housing rights violations, and few cases have been brought under individual complaint procedures. This study highlights common housing issues faced by each jurisdiction in the practical implementation of the right to housing, which are similar to those encountered by other countries but are often more severe due to the economic, political, and historical circumstances of the countries under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant transformations of electoral institutions, and provoked changes in the politics of electoral reforms in some polities. The paper claims that Russia has used a special model of electoral reform during the pandemic that differs from both its previous experience and recommendations of international organizations. The comparative historical method is applied to bridge internal and external explanations that may offer an understanding of the current reform of electoral rule in the Russian political context. The pandemic has become a reason for changing traditional electoral procedures and for implementing this reform. Empirical evidence suggests that the reform has been implemented by a depoliticized technocratic procedure ignoring the principles of political consensus. The reform process implies a shift of the government's main efforts from decision-making to increasing dependence on propaganda, and informational confrontation with opponents in the subsequent reform cycle. The approach to the implementation of the electoral reform casts doubt on the level of public support for the new procedures and exacerbates political risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the endorsement strategies of municipal council members in Russia. Since 2012, the candidates for chief executive office are required to collect the signatures at the local level. Filtering had been an important political toll before the return of direct gubernatorial elections, however, for the latter there are specific requirements in terms of territorial quotas and coverage that can be used against the independent candidates. We theorize that partisanship, gender, and employment sector on individual level and political competition, population size, and budget autonomy on the municipality level are important in shaping the councilmembers' decision. We test this theory against the data on 2020 Perm krai gubernatorial elections and find out that while the general pattern is largely in line with our expectations, there are nuances when it comes to supporting particular opposition candidates. This study contributes to the literature on electoral authoritarianism and subnational elections in Russia and to the general scholarship on the means of authoritarian control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the legal nature of relationships that arise during the electronic circulation of securities in Russia. Possibility for legal relations of property to emerge in relation to electronic documents; Conditional nature of the division of private legal relationship into those based in property and those based on obligation; Legal relationship of property and legal relationships of obligation of the owner of paper securities.

The 2018 Russian presidential election was effectively a contest not between Vladimir Putin and the other seven candidates on the ballot paper, but between Putin and the level of election turnout. Anything less than a large majority based on a respectable level of turnout would have undermined Putin's legitimacy to serve for a further six-year term. In the event, Putin achieved his goal. In this paper we examine the background to the election and the conduct of the campaign, and analyse the result. Putin's success can be traced to, first, long-standing patterns of differential turnout across the regions and, second, administrative initiatives by the election authorities which created a renewed confidence in the integrity of the election process. While there is evidence that those wishing to protest against Putin spoiled their votes, the impact of this was minor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most critical foreign policy issues of middle – power states is how to mold attitudes towards major powers. Since 1979, Iran has changed the nature of its relations with major powers. Although the Iranian Revolution adopted the 'Neither East, Nor West' motto as a macro guide to its foreign policy, since the late 1980s Iran and the Soviet Union – now Russia, have advanced their bilateral relations. Despite Iran and Russia sharing convergent views on many international issues, they have not promoted their ties to a strategic alliance. The present paper addresses the question of what conceptual model represents Iran-Russia relations and what challenges the two countries face in expanding their strategic partnership in the 2020s. This research addresses these problems at three levels: inter-state, regional, and global, and was conducted through a descriptive-analytical method. It is hypothesized that current Iran-Russia relations could be referred to as a 'strategic alignment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Control over the security services is a key ingredient of political survival in authoritarian regimes. This is particularly true during periods of leadership succession and high political uncertainty. In this paper, we compare the strategy used by Vladimir Putin towards the siloviki – the Russian security services – with that employed by Xi Jinping towards the Chinese security services. We find that in both countries, the security services have been significantly strengthened in recent years, while at the same time extensive anti-corruption campaigns have been used to eliminate key officials within the security structures. We argue that both developments can be seen as elements of a strategy to increase control over the public, while eliminating potential competition from regime insiders, in view of a deteriorating economic situation, and the constitutional (or quasi-constitutional) term limits faced by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in 2024 and 2022, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores, mainly from a legal perspective, the extent to which Russian regulation of traditional TV and online audiovisual media policies has been consistent with Council of Europe (hereinafter CoE) standards. The study compares the CoE and Russian approaches to specific aspects of audiovisual regulation including licensing, media ownership, public service media, digitalization, and national production. The paper first studies the CoE perspective through examining its conventional provisions related to audiovisual media regulation, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as well as CoE non-binding documents. The study proceeds to consider Russian national law governing audiovisual media and the practice of Russian courts of general jurisdiction on broadcast licensing. The paper suggests that Russian audiovisual regulation is insufficiently compatible with CoE standards and mainly seeks to maintain excessive governmental control over the audiovisual sector in a digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local executives in electoral authoritarian regimes can perform important regime-sustaining functions, including by delivering votes to the ruling party at election-time. Furthermore, when local executives are themselves elected, regimes can benefit from improved legitimacy and efficiency in local government. Yet elected local executives can create principal-agent problems and increase the risk that opposition groups gain office. How do authoritarian governments manage this tension? Prior research on Russia shows that elections are used to co-opt strong local mayors, while weak mayors are replaced with appointed managers. This paper argues that strong mayors are more likely to see elections canceled if their local machine is not delivering manufactured electoral support to the national party, while weak mayors are unlikely to be targeted. This hypothesis is supported using data from 207 Russian cities, including election-forensic estimates of election manipulation. The findings improve our understanding of cooptation of local leaders in electoral authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of vote mobilization and economic performance on gubernatorial appointments in Russia. Previous research has demonstrated that governors are more likely to be reappointed when the regime is performing well at the polls in the region. By contrast, there is inconsistent evidence that regional economic performance affects a governor's reappointment chances. We revisit this topic by updating and extending quantitative analyses of these key questions. We find consistent evidence that governors are more likely to be reappointed when regime vote shares are high in the region, a finding that extends from 2005 through 2020 and is robust to various model specifications and measurement approaches. In an update to existing research, we also show that this finding holds for multiple types of elections – regional legislative, State Duma and presidential – and we also find that high turnout is positively associated with governor reappointment. With respect to economic indicators, we find some suggestive evidence that governors are more likely to be reappointed when regional unemployment is decreasing, and investment and tax revenue are increasing, but these results are not robust. By evaluating governors on the basis of their ability to mobilize votes the center risks disincentivizing good governance. It may also give governors additional incentive to engage in electoral manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the landmark Aliev case decided by the Russian Constitutional Court in 2020. In this case, the Constitutional Court was expected to determine whether jurors must be prohibited from testifying about the outside influence they were subjected to during deliberation. The paper discusses what is right and wrong with the Constitutional Court's judgment and assesses the quality of its argumentation. The paper explores how the Constitutional Court's approach compares and contrasts with other countries' approaches and briefly outlines the structure of legislative reforms that need to be undertaken in Russia in the light of foreign experience. Overall, the author concludes that the integrity of jurors in Russia should be protected not by enabling jurors to testify at their discretion but by strengthening their legal immunity, which will strike an optimal balance between competing constitutional values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil society and environmental NGOs in Russia and China have been facing gradual crackdowns from their governments for the past decade and have been accused of being connected to foreign governments. Due to the changes in political and legal environments and the rise of a new generation of activists, the civil society landscape has been transformed in both countries. Drawing on 14 months of fieldwork, this paper aims to provide an updated account of environmental activism in Russia and China--the post-foreign-funding civil society. It focuses on grass-roots NGOs and their relationships with their foreign donors and the consequences of foreign grant withdrawal. The paper aims to understand how foreign support has shaped the image of environmental activism for the generation born shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crackdown on the students' protests in Tiananmen Square. It argues that young activists in Russia and China see environmentalism as something 'foreign', which also makes it attractive to take part in. The paper suggests that, while in some cases foreign funding and international linkages may have endangered existing NGOs in Russia and China, the opportunity to meet foreigners attracts the younger generation to environmental movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with Weaponizing History in the Russo-Ukranian War in diachronic perspective focusing on the events of 2014 and 2022. It shall be demonstrated that in 2014 it was medieval narratives that were the main focus: For instance, in the presidential speech addressed to the Federal Assembly on December 4, 2014, the annexation of Crimea was legitimized by the disputed "Korsun Legend". This firmly established narrative has made it possible to proclaim Crimea to be the cradle of the Russian nation and a sacred place. In the recent war Putin invokes the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) which has been developed into a central place of remembrance in his regime and according to which Ukraine is to be denazified and delegitimized as a product of Bolshevism. It is significant to note that these narratives synchronize and harmonize rather well with one another in the collective historical consciousness of Russians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's use of force in Ukraine has been described as a challenge to the rule of international law and an event of unilateral intervention. This paper provides a reinterpretation of this standard history of Russian revisionism. Our new history places this practice in a global governance context through an analysis of the politics concerning the international legal norm of 'non-intervention' and its legitimate/illegitimate exceptions for collective intervention. This analysis discloses a practice of Russian diplomacy that emerges out of resistance to humanitarian interventions advocated for by Western states. This practice justifies its own state-bound humanitarian intervention as the legitimate exception to the foundation of international order, which Russian diplomacy had previously sought to restore. We argue the political discourse of the worldview of 'state civilization' explains these events of Russian revisionism. We conclude with an analysis of the international paradoxes of peace and conflict contingent on this Russian worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussing the concept of the 'living constitution' in Russian constitutional theory and practice, this paper shows that the Russian concept of the living constitution differs from U.S. or European approaches to evolutive interpretation. The Russian concept has its roots in Soviet and pre-revolutionary Russian constitutional thinking. It reduces the normative power of the Constitution but allows an interpretation according to changing social conditions and gives the legislator a broad margin of appreciation. Whereas the 1993 Russian constitutional reform had been regarded as a paradigm shift with the intention to break with the past by declaring that the Constitution shall have supreme judicial force and direct effect, the paper also gives answers to the complexity of constitutional change and legal transplants and the role of constitutional theory and practice for the functioning of the current authoritarian regime in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The revival of shamanism in Southern Siberia is increasingly characterised by online forms of representation. Through digital ethnographic research conducted in Russian, this paper argues that the internet reproduces non-digital narratives and practices endowing them with global, immediate reach in a very widely recognisable form, thus contributing to the amplification, legitimisation and contestation of shamanic power. Analysing the websites of two Irkutsk-area 'shamanic centres', I consider how digitalisation is contributing to the process of institutionalisation of shamanism, reproducing and further legitimising post-socialist hierarchies and structures of power in Buryat shamanism, while highlighting the malleable nature of shamanic power and the web alike. Conversely, I recur to the Buryat concept of khel am (a form of 'omnipresent witchcraft') in relation to two recent news stories of national relevance in Russia involving Siberian shamans, to illustrate the challenge posed by the over-amplification of shamanic power through digitalisation to shamans and their institutions' claims to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the research agenda on agroholdings and mega-farms was elaborated in the 2017 special issue of IFAMA, much has been learned about structure, performance and management of these farming systems. Despite doubts about the sustainability of these farming systems, they have evolved and even flourished under a wide variety of governance and geographical conditions. It remains to be seen if these systems will be successful in the long run, but continued research is warranted to understand their evolution, functional forms and impacts. This special issue includes four papers examining acquisition, growth and restructuring processes under differing conditions in Brazil, Russia, and Ukraine to gain a deeper and broader understanding of these management forms. A second major focus of this special issue is in the socio-political sphere with three papers to document and better understand the corporate social responsibility of such firms in Argentina, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. The new knowledge and understanding gained from these papers leads to a reformulation of the research agenda on the development of agroholdings and mega-farms in transition and emerging market economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the signing of bilateral treaties between the federal and regional governments of Russia in the period of 1994–1998. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 64 cases suggests that by signing bilateral treaties in exchange for political support President Yeltsin built a broad coalition with subnational leaders. This strategy allowed Yeltsin to win the 1996 presidential election but, in the long run, contributed to the preservation of authoritarian enclaves in Russia. The results are in line with the argument that authoritarian consolidation in Russia during the 2000s was deeply embedded in the center-region relations of the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kalmyks have lived in southwest Russia for about four centuries. Whilst cultural assimilation with neighbouring peoples has been an ongoing process since the Kalmyks first settled in the lower Volga from 1630, the twentieth century, which saw the rise and fall of several political regimes in Russia, was the most dramatic period in the group's history in that it had a deep impact not only on their social structure, religion, and way of life but also on their identity. Subjected to various political ideologies, not to mention punitive mass deportation to Siberia and Central Asia from 1943 to 1956, the Kalmyks had to constantly negotiate their identity not only with the Tsarist/Soviet/Russian state but also among themselves. Whilst today's self-narratives of Kalmyk ethnic identity are inextricably linked to the discourse of post-Soviet cultural revival, in order to explain the fluidity and dynamics of Kalmyk identity this paper takes a comprehensive approach to the history of the Kalmyk people since their first settlement on the lower Volga. Ethnic identity and its development are narrated chronologically, taking into account social structure, religion, historiography, and popular concepts to which the Kalmyks have been subjected, and which they have embraced, in the course of their history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of color revolutions has occupied a prominent place in Russian politics for a good reason. The major threat of color revolutions as modern political warfare designed by Western countries deeply affected the political process in Russia since 2005. It may have appeared that the imperative of resisting them was the result of a non-democratic regime reacting to neighboring countries' uprisings. Some portrayed it as authoritarian learning. This paper suggests that the counteractions stemmed from the interests of disunited Russian elite groups who were seeking opportunities to reinforce their dominance and capitalize on the idea of significant external threats. The phenomenon reshaped the balance within elite groups and led to the consolidation of law enforcement networks on the eve of Putin's third term. Further, the prevailing perception of color revolutions discouraged any elite splits that could lead to proto-democratic rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes changing political processes in contemporary Russia that encompass both machine politics and populism. By considering some of the relational trade-offs between machine politics and populism, this paper argues that the former, which has been a prominent feature since the 1990s, is now weakening, as is demonstrated by the recent regional policy recently adopted by the Kremlin. On the other hand, some populist elements became obvious after the Ukrainian crisis. The 2016 Duma election can be viewed in this political context. The Kremlin's attempts to make a 'clean' image, and to distinguish Putin from a United Russia party reflect these underlying changes in Russia's political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Russian case involving the perception and implementation of international law (IL) within its national jurisdiction during the twentyfive year-period since the adoption of the 1993 Constitution. This constitution contains a rather progressive and radical principle concerning the place and role of IL in the domestic legal order. A brief look back at the development of Russia's current legal order will help to facilitate evaluating the real nature of this provision. In an effort to establish this principle, States must provide a certain set of tools, both legislative and organisational. This paper introduces the development of this principle by examining Russian doctrine, modern legislation and practice, paying particular attention to Russian judicial activity. It thus presents an overview of the entire discussion regarding the implementation of IL within Russia. This implementation has been examined extensively from multiple perspectives, including the one based on a wide array of theoretical and normative materials, as well as the practice of law enforcement bodies, especially different courts, during the period under observation. This contribution attempts to characterise the Russian Federation's general attitude and approach to the implementation of international obligations into its domestic jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an interpretation of the activity of the Russian NGO 'Soldiers' Mothers' which provides legal assistance to soldiers and their families. This NGO attracts significant attention in Russia and some authors have already suggested explanations of its work from anthropological and sociological perspectives. This paper interprets the 'Mothers' through the concept of human dignity as understood by the German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas. As argued by Habermas, dignity is a communicative structure that makes the passage from morality to law and, therefore, the social dialogue possible. It is shown that dignity occupies a crucial place in the work of the activists of the organization, which forms a link between private and public spheres. This paper is based on interviews with the activists of the 'Soldiers' mothers' of St. Petersburg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are Russians religious? In this paper, religiosity in Russia (2011–2021) is decomposed into age, cohort and period effects using panel data analysis techniques. It is shown that age effects on religiosity are U-shaped: respondents are more religious when young or old with the minima at the age of 41–45 for women and 46–60 for men. The most religious cohorts in Russia were born in 1960–1980. There is a sharp decline in religiosity in younger generations. There is also a large gender religiosity gap in older generations: women are more religious than men. However, in younger cohorts, the gender religiosity gap closes. Time effects suggest that religiosity in Russia was increasing before 2016, while in 2016, a substantial decline occurred. Since 2016, there has been no growth in religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a discussion of various aspects of Chechen relation to the war in Ukraine, including oppositional voices as well as discourses and actions of those supporting the Russian position. The article compares and contrasts the war in Ukraine with the two wars Russia waged against Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Commenting on the war in Ukraine, the author focuses on the phenomenon of the 'Kadyrovites' (Chechen auxiliary troops fighting on the Russian side) on the one hand and Chechen units fighting on the Ukrainian side on the other. It is argued that the silence of the international community in the Chechen war afforded Russia a sense of impunity, thus reinforcing its reckless military strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Free Buryatia Foundation is Russia's first ethnic anti-war advocacy group founded in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. One of the major parts of our work is analysis of open-source data on the participation of Russia's ethnic minorites (including Buryats) in the war in Ukraine. In this paper, we discuss ethnic disproportions in the confirmed Russian-side casualties of the war in Ukraine where such ethnicities as Buryats, Kazakhs, and Tuvans are clearly over-represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine came as a surprise to many, and it caused a range of responses across Russia. Their members apply decolonial vocabulary to understand the predicament of minorities in Russia, and they consider the Russian military aggression in Ukraine and the position of ethnic minorities in Russia as closely related issues. For instance, when the so-called "partial mobilisation" in Russia took off in September 2022, some of the movements, including the Free Buryatia Foundation and New Tuva, responded by providing support to those fleeing Russia, as well as those who were drafted. The present block of short papers is a result of the round table I The Voices of Russia's Minorities on the Invasion of Ukraine i that took place on 7 July 2022 at the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge. [Extracted from the article]

Popular unrest is a source of worry also for seemingly stable authoritarian regimes. Young faces have become the image of protest in Russia over the last two years, and they convey the importance of protests that may emerge in any authoritarian regime. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what kind of young people are taking to the street and how their mobilisation is judged by their peers. This paper draws on survey data from 2018 and 2019 on the political attitudes of young Russians alongside focus group interviews generated in 2019 in Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg. The combination of these two sources allows us to explore the shifting assessments of political and environmental protests and young people's participation therein. It is argued that young Russians of different political orientation agree that Putin has been in power for too long and that also regime supporters do not, in principle, oppose regime critical protests. Rather, supporters insist on the importance for protests to be officially approved but question the genuine political nature of oppositional mobilisation. Friendship networks and institutional trust emerge as the key variables for understanding assessment of protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on transnational polygamous marriages of migrants in Russia and how transnational polygynous practices influence people's understanding of marriage, love and family. The paper shows how polygamous migrant marriages are negotiated between families, by presenting the perspective of individuals involved in such relationships in Russia. It argues that transborder relationships contribute to the transformation of social interactions. People function in two or sometimes more countries, creating opportunities for parallel partnering or other options that influence family networks in the migrants' countries of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the second half of the 19th century Russian positive law underwent a rapid and profound reform. It is best illustrated by the legislation in the domain of civil law, as one compares the pre-reformed casuistic and inconsistent Svod Zakonov (Digest of Laws) of 1833 and the 'westernised' Draft Civil Code of 1905. This transition was largely facilitated by the emergence of a fully-fledged comparative legislation in Russia. In this paper I investigate the decisive role of Russian legal scholarship in developing a comparative approach using an original synthesis of several streams of European legal thought, namely Savigny's Historical School, German Pandectism, the French école de l'exégèse , and Jhering's sociological doctrine. I argue that such legal scholars as Meyer, Pobedonostsev, Pakhman, Shershenevich, Annenkov succeeded in overcoming the -limits of the pre-reformed, literal knowledge of the Svod Zakonov and began to study Russian civil law as part of the law of the 'civilised nations' through dogmatic comparison which resembled the comparative legislation in Western Europe. The evidence for this claim is taken from the main doctrinal works between 1840 and 1910 which represent both streams of comparison and it is analysed in the framework of comparative legal history. Special attention is paid to the contribution of dogmatic comparison in developing the general part of contract law as a recognisable hallmark of civil law in continental Europe which came to be adopted in the doctrinal writings and the draft legislation of the late Russian empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that between 2012 and 2019, the Kremlin recalibrated preventive counter-revolutionary practices due to fears that an event like the Arab Spring or Euromaidan could occur in Moscow or that the 2011–2012 winter of discontent could return. While the Kremlin returned to practices of the preventive counter-revolution used after 2004, the tactics increased creating a "politics of fear." The preventive counter-revolution post-2012 implemented new tactics, incorporating an external element of countering the involvement of Western states in destabilizing authoritarian regimes, specifically in the post-Soviet space, thereby attempting to weaken Western states. The tactics of the preventive counter-revolution after 2012 have the potential to coup-proof the Kremlin and serve as a model for other authoritarian regimes to devise methods to counter Western states and democratization, thereby allowing the Kremlin to become a model and black knight for other authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avant-garde filmmakers in the Soviet Union argued over the merits of the played film and the documentary film. They argued about the duration of shots, long or short. They questioned what constituted filmic material, camera subjectivity, the objective fact and whether film extended the eyes, and the capacity to see, or whether it wielded a fist, augmenting or bashing feelings. Shub contributed to these discussions, not least through her own film work, produced out of a combination of commitment and necessity. This paper traces these discussions and Shub's role within them through a focus on two objects and the way in which they come to appear in film and film-discourse: strawberries and cream. The strawberries are drawn initially from Shklovsky's comments on the inequities of US agriculture in his Journey to the Land of Movies (1926) and the cream stems from Eisenstein's mechanical separator in The Old and the New (1929). Shub's particular take on the object in her film work will emerge through the dialectical tensions of two objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that labor migrants from different countries all over the Eurasian Union are the backbone of crucial economy sectors in the Russian Federation as, inter alia, construction, agriculture or trade. This article deals with another less mentioned but similarly significant labor market, which substantially changed its assemblage during the last couple of years, namely commercial urban transport services. In the last two decades, the marshrutka sector underwent major reforms and formalization processes that, on the one hand, brought operators back into the tax net and ensured a certain extension of control to the local transportation departments but, on the other hand, worsened the labor conditions of the transportation workers. Drawing from the empirical evidence of my fieldwork in southern Russia, I describe currently problematized mobility assemblages and embed the actor's articulations in broader conflicts within the marshrutka business and transportation regulation policy. I further analyze how labor migrants have been forced to accept unfavorable working conditions in the enterprises as a direct result of politically triggered reforms in the marshrutka business. The paper provides insights into the social arena of the marshrutka , which serves as a societal encounter of urban conflicts and transformation mirroring (un-)intended effects of the local transportation reformation attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rule-of-law dialogue between the West and Russia has effectively run into a dead end. This paper attempts to open up a new perspective by addressing the corporation as a sub-unit of society. Observing that Russia, before adopting a comprehensive legal framework for risk management in Summer 2018, has had almost 20 years of experience in various approaches to risk management and corporate compliance, the question is whether corporate law has finally reached the point of shedding some of the characteristic features of Russian law in general to turn the corporate sphere into a space in which citizens are able to pursue their business interests in a safe and legally protected manner. Thus, we may be on the eve of witnessing the emergence of a rule-of-law culture outside the traditional domain of citizen-state relations. This would open up avenues for a renewed dialogue on rule of law between the West and Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]