Latest blog items
Friday, 30. April 2010  0 comment(s) |
Crafting a common history for post-Soviet Eurasia?The perennial urge to use historical scholarship, among other things, as a kind of glue for what has now come to be known as post-Soviet Eurasia leads to a larger question: Is “Eurasia” merely a handy way of describing the “post-Soviet space”? Or does it have a larger and deeper meaning somehow being intimately connected with the notion of “Russia” and with what some tend to call the “Russian civilization” or the “Russian world”? |
| Friday, 5. March 2010 1 comment(s) |
Vancouver as the mirror of Russian degradationAnyone who grew up and did his studies in the communist Soviet Union will remember Lenin’s article “Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution.” To paraphrase the title of the proletarian leader’s 1908 piece, Vancouver Olympics proved to be the mirror of the post-Soviet Russia’s degradation. |
| Thursday, 12. November 2009 0 comment(s) |
Geopolitics of identityIt would appear that history is becoming a hot issue once again. As I’m currently doing some intensive conference-hopping, the politics of memory proves to be one of the most discussed topics amongst historians, political scientists and IR specialists. |
| Friday, 18. September 2009 1 comment(s) |
Ankara’s Abkhazia gambitWhile Turkey’s attempts at rapprochement with Armenia have attracted much attention, Ankara’s moves to forge closer relations with Abkhazia appear to be much less publicized. Yet the recent developments in the south-western Caucasus are likely to get Turkey more involved in the region’s complex geopolitical equation. |
| Thursday, 7. May 2009 0 comment(s) |
Turkey’s Erdogan puts leading foreign policy theorist into the driver’s seatAs any long-time Turkey watcher will tell you, Turkey is never boring. Here’s the most recent confirmation of this thesis for you. Just get this. It is a beautiful Friday afternoon on May 1, when all Turkish bureaucracy along with all the other rich and powerful are leaving dusty Ankara for their weekend hideouts by the sea. It was precisely this serene moment that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had chosen to unveil a major reshuffle of his Cabinet. |
| Tuesday, 10. February 2009 0 comment(s) |
The return of the “bearded one”When a leading US academic opened his remarks at the high-profile FIIA seminar yesterday with a patently materialist quote from Marx, I wasn’t surprised. I knew it was a reflection of a powerful intellectual trend – or, as Marx himself might put it, a sign of the Zeitgeist. |
| Friday, 16. January 2009 0 comment(s) |
Expanding blogosphere as an element of phony democracy in EurasiaIn Russia, Kazakhstan and in most post-Soviet states there cannot be a true dialog between the rulers and the ruled as the major channels making such dialog possible – democratic elections, free press and vibrant political life based on the robust multi-party system – simply don’t function. |
| Thursday, 27. November 2008 0 comment(s) |
Russian economic crisis: Some saw it comingHappy countries, like happy families in Leo Tolstoy’s famous phrase, appear to resemble one another, while unhappy ones – for instance, those struggling with the current global economic crisis – are unhappy in their own particular ways. Russia, as some commentators suggest, has been hit especially hard, facing all the negative aspects of the financial meltdown at once. The country that only very recently has been so self-confident and full of swagger, notes the seasoned Russia hand Stephen Sestanovich in a commentary which was posted on the Council on Foreign Relations website, is now coping with the “sharply declining export earnings from energy and metals, over-leveraged corporate balance sheets and a chorus of bailout appeals, a credit crunch and banking failures, a bursting real-estate bubble and mortgage defaults, accelerating capital flight, and unavoidable pressures for devaluation.” |
| Thursday, 27. November 2008 0 comment(s) |
Russian economic crisis: Some saw it comingHappy countries, like happy families in Leo Tolstoy’s famous phrase, appear to resemble one another, while unhappy ones – for instance, those struggling with the current global economic crisis – are unhappy in their own particular ways. Russia, as some commentators suggest, has been hit especially hard, facing all the negative aspects of the financial meltdown at once. |
| Monday, 13. October 2008 0 comment(s) |
Struggling to make sense of complexities of the emerging new worldTwo pieces of analysis that I’ve read over the weekend appear to be emblematic of two Western ways of looking at the current international situation in general and at Russia in particular. To be sure, these two approaches have a long tradition. The first tends to simplify things and sees the world as being basically black and white. The second approach focuses on ambiguities and contradictions and holds that reality is colored in zillion shades of grey. But while the first manner of seeing and reflecting produces a seemingly neat and clear-cut picture, it is the willingness and ability to see the complexities of the modern world that eventually leads to better understanding. |
