Preface - Russia's turn to the East
Pictures can sometimes be more revealing than words. If you ever sit down and look at a night-time satellite picture of the Earth, you will find that there are still huge areas on our planet that are not lit up by human activities and cities. One of the largest ‘dark spots’ in the Northern Hemisphere is found in the Russian Far East, or Pacific Russia. Here are enormous territories rich in natural resources like petroleum, minerals, forests and water – but these vast reaches are sparsely populated, and lack connective infrastructure. A closer look at the satellite image will reveal a tiny thread of light, almost like an umbilical cord, linking the Far Eastern part of Russia with the European part. This is the Trans-Siberian Railway that connects the Eastern and Western parts of Russia. The same satellite picture shows few traces of networking with the territories of the immediate neighbourhood – the brightly lit, heavily populated, urbanized and dynamic Asian economies of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. It is hardly surprising that Russia has intensified its efforts at closer integration with these Asian neighbours, economically and politically. For Russia, this pivot to Asia represents huge opportunities, but it also entails significant economic, administrative, technological, cultural and strategic challenges. The contributors to this book examine the nature, speed and direction of the long-term structural shift. Rather than taking the declared ‘pivot’ as a fact and exploring the likely consequences, the authors ask whether there has in fact been such a new pivot – or if what we see today is a continuation of longer-duration trends, concerns and ambitions. The authors explore the relationship between integration and disintegration, examining whether Russia’s turn to the East has intensified or changed in nature – domestically and internationally – since the onset of the current crisis in relations with the West. In turning to the East, is Russia also turning away from the West? This project is a result of collaboration involving scholars from Norway, Russia, Korea and the UK, and has been supported financially by the Korea Foundation and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In preparing this book, we have also benefited from our involvement in the project ‘Developing Asia Pacific’s Last Frontier: Fostering International Cooperation in the Development of Russia’s Far East and Siberia’, working with partners in Russia, Japan, China and Singapore.
World of the Right: Alternative visions of global order (WoR)
Prosjektet ser nærmere på det konservative "nye høyre" i Russland, USA og Europa, og studerer hva slags alternative tanker og visjoner de har for global politikk....
An Asian Pivot Starts at Home: The Russian Far East in Russian Regional Policy
To realize its ambitious goals of turning the Far East into Russia’s gateway to the Asia-Pacific, the Kremlin in 2012 established the Ministry for the Development of the Far East. Structurally, this ministry is a hybrid, with offices at the federal and the regional levels, reflecting both Moscow’s centralized take on policy formulation and the difficulties of micro-managing politics in a region distant in time and space. Analysing whether the new ministry has been a success, the author concludes that, while Moscow’s primary goal has been to open a Far Eastern gateway, a side-effect might be that the Far East will become better integrated with the rest of the country, providing for more balanced development throughout the Federation.
Trump, Putin and rejected greatness
Why do Putin and Trump undermine the international consensus knowledge that their national academic and governmental milieus have been so central to building?
Introduction: Exploring Russian nationalisms
In the introductory chapter, the two editors, Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, argue that in Putin's third period as president, nationalism has become even more important for understanding Russian politics and society than before. Prior to the annexation of Crimea, the influx of low-skilled labour from Central Asia and the Caucasus had been creating strong migrantophobic sentiments in sectors of the Russian population, boosting support for ethno-nationalism. The dramatic events in Ukraine in 2014 onwards, however, radically changed the political scene in Russia. Nationalist movements in opposition to the Kremlin went into steep decline, while the nation rallied around its leader, President Putin, who for the first time explicitly used nationalist themes in his propaganda. At first glance, this development may appear radically new. However, our introductory chapter, drawing on insights from several of the chapters in the volume, shows how this pattern has precedents in Russian history: Russian state authorities have generally tended to use other methods of legitimation than nationalism, leaving the nationalist field to various societal forces. However, in times of crisis – as during the Great Patriotic War– a state-focused, imperialistic nationalism is fully exploited as a mobilising device, and any autonomous, popular expressions of nationalism are suppressed. Seemingly an oxymoron, 'imperialist nationalism' has in fact been a strong current throughout Russian history, competing with cultural and ethnic nationalism.
'Restore Moscow to the Muscovites': Othering 'the migrants' in the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections
Today, the Russian Federation has the second largest migrant population in the world in absolute numbers. The chapter looks at what role these migrants – and migrantophobia – play in Russian contemporary identity discourse through the lens of the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections. On the eve of these elections, Muscovites identified the large numbers of labour migrants in the capital as the most important campaign issue. This chapter explores how 'the migrant issue' was addressed at the candidate level as well as how it was perceived by ordinary Muscovites. First, it traces what images of 'the migrant' the candidates presented; how they assessed the potential for integration into Russian society; and what measures they proposed for regulating the flow of new migrants. Next, drawing on survey data, the chapter discusses to what extent campaign promises reflected the positions of the electorate on the same issues. It concludes that the Moscow electoral experiment of allowing semi-competitive elections contributed to pushing the borders of what mainstream politicians in Russia perceived as acceptable positions on migrants and migration policy, for at least two reasons: Firstly, incumbent mayor Sobianin faced stiff competition from the rising star of the non-systemic opposition, liberal-nationalist Aleksei Navalnyi, and had to find a way of outbidding him on the migrant issue. Second, in this more competitive environment, Sobianin could not rely on administrative resources alone, but had to respond to popular demands, to ensure an acceptable win: therefore, he had to appear as 'tough' on migrants. The experiment with semi-competitive elections in Moscow in 2013 thus demonstrated the limits of the Kremlin’s ability to fully control Russian nationalist discourse and also contributed to reinforcing the idea of 'the migrant' as the new 'Other' in Russian identity discourse.
Russia before and after Crimea: Nationalism and Identity, 2010-17
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 marked a watershed in post-Cold War European history and brought East–West relations to a low. At the same time, by selling this fateful action in starkly nationalist language, the Putin regime achieved record-high popularity. This book shows how, after the large-scale 2011–13 anti-Putin demonstrations in major Russian cities and the parallel rise in xenophobia related to the Kremlin’s perceived inability to deal with the influx of Central Asian labour migrants, the annexation of Crimea generated strong ‘rallying around the nation’ and ‘rallying around the leader’ effects. The contributors to this collection go beyond the news headlines to focus on overlooked aspects of Russian society such as intellectual racism and growing xenophobia. These developments are contextualised with an overview of Russian nationalism: state-led, grassroots and the tensions between the two.
Russland sett med nordiske øyne
De nordiske landene ligner utvilsomt på hverandre i mange henseender. Men hvor mye felles har de når det kommer til forholdet til Russland? Det er tema i Nordisk Østforum (NØF).
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Afterword: 6400 kilometers away - but not a policy world apart
The Afterword presents two key findings from this volume. First, while numerous new strategy documents and instruments have been adopted in recent years, contributing authors voice concern about the steps Moscow has taken to translate lofty ideas into practical policies. Second, the key initiatives were formulated well before the current crisis in Russia's relations with the West. While a certain rebalancing of the Western and Eastern vectors is taking place, there is still a long way to go before Russia's 'window to the East' can match its 'window to the West'. Only long-term commitment on the part of Moscow can transform the Russian Far East from a neglected periphery and military outpost into a viable gateway to the Asia-Pacific.