The future of NATO enlargement after the Ukraine crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was partly in response to NATO enlargement. NATO leaders counter that eastern enlargement is not a cause of the Ukraine crisis, and they argue that enlargement does not threaten Russia, but rather it creates stability for all of Europe. This article examines the history of NATO–Russian tensions over enlargement, considers how NATO's enlargement policy factored into the Ukraine crisis, and reviews options for the future of enlargement. Drawing on diplomatic history and geopolitical theory, the article explains Russia's persistent hostility towards NATO's policy of eastward expansion and highlights NATO's failure to convert Russia to its liberal world‐view. The alliance's norm‐driven enlargement policy has hindered the creation of an enduring NATO–Russia cooperative relationship and helped fuel the outbreak of conflict in Georgia and Ukraine. In light of this, NATO should alter its current enlargement policy by infusing it with geopolitical rationales. This means downgrading the transformative and democratization elements of enlargement and, instead, focusing on how candidate countries add to NATO capabilities and impact overall alliance security. A geopolitically‐driven enlargement policy would prioritize countries in the Balkan and Scandinavian regions for membership and openly exclude Georgia and Ukraine from membership. Ultimately, this policy would have the effect of strengthening NATO while giving it more flexibility in dealing with Russia.     

Imperial Nationality Policy and the Russian Version of the History of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article analyses how changes in Russian nationality policy after the 1830–31 Uprising in Poland and Lithuania led to the initiative of an historical project that sought to prove the Russian nature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It focuses on the tender organized by the Ministry of Education in the 1830s for the publication of a history textbook, which was to form the canon of Russian interpretations of the history of the Grand Duchy. The most important creator of this narrative was Nikolai Ustrialov. According to Ustrialov, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was just as much a Russian state as the Grand Duchy of Moscow, with the sole caveat that the tiny Lithuanian nation had played a part in creating it. Territorial rivalry between these two states was a mere ‘family quarrel’ over which dynasty would prevail. The supremacy of the Lithuanian dynasty did not mean the victory of an alien power since the Lithuanian princes were closely related to Russian princes and moreover, a considerable number of them belonged to the Eastern (Orthodox) Church. Russians could regard therefore them as their own. The last part of this article is devoted to the changes in nationality policy after the 1863–64 Uprising and the requirement for a new interpretation of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.     

当代俄罗斯史学中动乱学研究的新趋向

苏联解体后,俄罗斯学界开始反思20世纪初的革命,在深化对17世纪初大动乱研究的基础上,形成一种以“动乱”取代“革命”的话语,采用多学科综合研究的方法,构建以“动乱—帝国”为模型的俄国国家系统性危机理论体系的动乱学研究范式。该范式强调,17世纪初、20世纪初和20世纪末发生的历史事件是俄国国家制度的三次系统性危机(即动乱),前两次危机都以建立帝国而结束,俄国历史在“动乱—帝国”的周期性节律中循环。动乱学的提出,是21世纪“俄罗斯学”和“帝国学”研究热潮下的产物,也是一部分俄国学者对当前俄罗斯向何处去的一种回答。但作为建构一门新学科的尝试,其学科体系尚待进一步深化。     

The use of regulation and governance theories in research on post-socialism: the adaptation of enterprises in Vyborg1

This article deals with developments since the collapse of socialism in Vyborg, the former Finnish city transferred to the Soviet Union's north–west frontier in 1944. It assesses how enterprises founded during the socialist era, their heirs, and new Russian and foreign firms, have coped with economic change and adjusted to the new economic system. It also explains the evolution of hybrid forms of activity on the enterprise level and their impact on the development of Vyborg as a local economy. This paper shows that the traditions of socialism embodied in many enterprises' adaptation strategies have helped the public sector in financial crisis because enterprises have continued the socialist traditions to take care of fractions of public infrastructure.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

Microstoria,Pacific History,and the Question of Scale: Two or Three Things That We Should Know About Them

This article is prompted by the recent debate on the so-called crisis in the humanities, and the related call for historians to change direction by returning to history of the longue durée. While pointing out that the ‘crisis’ is more influenced by the changing political economy of the tertiary education sector than by specific historiographical practices, I suggest that small-scale analysis remains compatible with global history approaches. Articulating a parallel examination of Pacific historiography and the Italian variant of microhistory, the article argues that the latter provides fertile stimuli for Pacific history. In particular, I maintain that integrating social analysis can serve to counterbalance the over-emphasis on cultural aspects found in much Pacific historiography.     

中国俄国史研究百年检视与思考

中俄交往始于蒙古西征和金帐汗国时代(1238-1480年),中国学人撰写俄国史自1878年刊印的鹭江奇迹人的《俄国志略》,到今天已经有整整140年的历史。中国的俄国史学科伴随民族命运、国家危机以及世界形势的变化而生,自诞生之日起即负有学人情怀、民族重任和学术职责三重使命。因此,俄国史学科在中国一直发挥着“知夷”和“盗火”的两大作用。中华人民共和国成立后,俄国史(包括苏联时期和俄罗斯联邦时期)研究获得了70年的巨大发展,主要成就有:1985年中国苏联东欧史研究会成立(1992年英文更名为中国俄罗斯东欧中亚史研究会),高等院校、社会科学院、党校、国家有关部委及党政机构纷纷设立俄国史或俄罗斯问题研究机构,建立了从历史学学士、俄国史硕士到俄国史博士的三级专业人才培养体系,俄国史和俄罗斯问题研究的专业期刊创立并连续出版,大量的俄国通史、中俄(中苏)关系史、专题著作、各类教科书、翻译著作(来自俄文、英法、法文、德文、波兰文等)出版,中国俄国史学者积极参与国际学术会议和国际合作研究,具有中国特色的中国“俄罗斯学”新学科正在建立过程中。     

The triumph of Russian national security policy? Russia’s rapid rebound

Russia’s return to prominence in international affairs has been in many respects surprising. Russia’s easy seizure of Crimea, its role in Syria and its ambitious pivot eastward have emboldened Moscow at a time of crisis for the liberal order. This article characterises Russian national security policy as a deliberate ‘rebound’ strategy, designed to deliver a rapid return to power and status. The author defines rebounding in respect to four characteristics: a relatively short timeline for the rebounding state to achieve its goals; a strategic (re-)emphasis on territory and hard power; the construction of alternative networks of influence via institutions; and active efforts to undermine existing normative and legal orthodoxies. The author then assesses these in terms of specific Russian national security policy objectives, including in the key domain of information operations. The article concludes that Vladimir Putin has skilfully employed conventional material capabilities and geopolitics, combined with the exploitation of contemporary information networks for instrumental purposes. Paradoxically, though, those same factors will constrain Russian national security objectives in the future.     

Lev Gumilev: The Ideologist of the Soviet Empire

Summary

Russian intellectuals like to appeal to examples of foreign history. Lev Gumilev's views on history are a good example. Gumilev was one of the most well-known representatives of Eurasianism, which was in turn one of the most interesting intellectual constructs in Russian historiography. Gumilev believed that Russia was born not from Kievan Rus—the view of the majority of Russian historians of his time—but from the empire of the Mongols. While Gumilev saw Europe as a hostile entity to Russia/Eurasia, this was not the case with the neo-Eurasianists of the Yeltsin era. This article examines Gumilev's Eurasianism and its influence on modern Russian national identity.     

‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946–47

At the end of World War II, European residents of Shanghai included Jewish displaced persons and ‘White’ émigrés. While the Jewish refugees were initially viewed by Australia as a humanitarian crisis, they then became a controversial sideshow to a planned mass resettlement of displaced persons from Europe. This article contextualises the actual and proposed Jewish and Russian migration from Shanghai with regard to Australian attitudes towards postwar European migrations from the East. This argument traces the anti-Semitic and anti-Russian sentiments that pressured Calwell into ultimately blocking Russian migration from Shanghai as well as placing a tight curb on the migration of Jewish displaced persons from both Asia and Europe.     

The Experience of Time as Crisis: On Croce's and Benjamin's Concept of History

In the early decades of the twentieth century the experience of time as crisis became the catalyst for a fundamental reorientation in the relationship between historical materialism and idealism, leading to the rejection of simplistic mechanical concepts of historical time. This reorientation represents a turning point in the history of European ideas, clearly evident in the work of two major thinkers of this period, usually associated with opposing political ideologies: the Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin and the liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce. Based on a conceptual framework borrowed partly from Reinhart Koselleck, this article explains how the experience of acute crisis led both thinkers to develop a new understanding of historical time, which shows surprising parallels. Both authors used the reorientation in the relationship between idealism and materialism to criticize positivist approaches to the analysis of historical change and to reject deterministic accounts of the future.     

The Global Economic Crisis and Foreign Investment in Russia from the EU: Empirical Evidence from Firm-Level Data

This paper empirically examines the impact of the recent global economic crisis on foreign investment from EU countries in Russia by estimating a location choice model for foreign firms' entry in Russian regions for the period 1997-2011. It also examines the relative importance of various determinants of location choice on the redistribution of foreign-owned firms among Russian regions before and after the crisis. Strong evidence during the post-crisis period (2008-2011) of a decrease in market-seeking foreign investment in manufacturing and resource-seeking foreign investment in trade is examined not only in light of the crisis but also (in the latter case) within the context of the new Russian law for foreign investment in strategic industries, which went into effect in 2008.     

Chinese Objects in Eurasian Empire: On the Cultural Meaning of Chinese Art in Russia in the Late 17th–Early 18th Centuries

This article examines special features of “Chinoiserie” or “Chinese fashion” (“Kitaischina”) in Russia from the late 17th to the early 18th century: The reign of Peter the First. It discusses this cultural phenomenon’s historical origins, demonstrates the role of Chinese luxury goods and art objects in the era’s Russo-Chinese cultural exchange, and illustrates how Chinese decorative arts were used in Russian palaces. While Chinoiserie in Russia was influenced by similar trends in Western Europe, it was rooted in the unique history of regular contacts between Russia and the Qing Empire. Chinese objects not only appeared as commodities in the higher levels of Russian society, they also contributed to the prestige of the Russian state. Peter the First had a political purpose behind the collection, display and imitation of Chinese art objects in Russian palaces, as these practices demonstrated the growing wealth and power of newly established Russian Empire, which enjoyed trade connections with the Qing Empire. While contemporary perceptions of China in Russia were derived mostly by the exotic images of export art, ethnographic collections of genuine Chinese utensils, which were founded during that period, also contributed to Russian views of China. This research uses a comprehensive methodology, combining studies of material objects preserved in Russian museums and written sources, including archival records.     

Urban planning in Russia: towards the market

The article discusses the recent transformation of the Russian system of urban planning from the socialist system to a market one. The focus is on new problems of the Russian planning system, the relationship between the new and old systems, and the role of the bureaucracy and participation. A case study of the city of Moscow develops the subject at a metropolitan level. It is argued that Russian planning in transition has been planning in crisis and it is only now becoming an effective and pluralistic social institution. The recent revival of planning has been much dependent on Russia's regions; a diversification of planning systems throughout the country is expected.     

Against the ‘tyranny’ of single-family dwelling: insights from Christiania at 40

Ownership of a single-family dwelling remains the dominant aspiration in market-led economies. In a hyper-privatised landscape, it is widely assumed that people will not share housing except in extraordinary circumstances. There is nevertheless a long and rich history of countercultural groups who imagine and practise alternative forms of shared housekeeping and collaborative dwelling. This article draws on first-hand observations of daily life from the countercultural community of Christiania, in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, at a critical moment in a 40-year history of state-threatened ‘normalization’. Christiania is an intriguing lens through which to re-imagine affordable, adaptable, gender democratic housing and urban structure: it reveals how sharing, mutuality and innovation intersect at multiple scales of homemaking and community governance. These insights are relevant for provoking new thinking about dwelling and mutuality in the context of a deepening crisis in housing provision and access across Europe.     

Contestation and negotiation: regionalism and the politics of school textbooks in Ukraine's eastern borderlands

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to explore the (re)construction of identities in three regions adjacent to the Russian–Ukrainian border. The article analyses the areas' historical and political development and argues that placing such areas within a mega‐region term such as ‘eastern Ukraine’ fails to recognise important differences between them. Content analysis of regional history textbooks reveals that the ‘official’ state historical narrative found in school history textbooks is heavily negotiated, with regional elites in each area ‘picking and choosing’ which parts of the ‘official’ state narrative to accept and which parts to reject. In this way, the article demonstrates how the notions of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ are highly debated topics in the Ukrainian classroom as the central and local state elites are both part of the dynamic process of (re)definition of national identities.     

The 'greening' of global project financing: the case of the Sakhalin-II offshore oil and gas project

This article responds to a plea for economic geographers to play greater attention to the world's resource peripheries. The article presents a detailed case study of oil and gas development offshore of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. The study serves to illustrate the complexity of resource peripheries and to demonstrate how a critical approach to resource geographies aids economic geographic theorization of globalization. The case study focuses on how the 'greening' of global project financing has created a means by which environmental non-governmental organizations hold the international oil companies to account. The article describes the transnational advocacy network that has developed to protest against the Sakhalin-II project. The key issues are identified and the response of the operator, Sakhalin Energy, is considered. Finally, the recent actions of the Russian Government in relation to the environmental impacts of the Sakhalin-II project are examined. The article concludes by assessing the ways in which the Sakhalin case demonstrates the complex processes that construct resource peripheries and how such analyses contribute to the development of a truly global economic geography. Le 'verdissement' du financement de projets à     

‘Independence is not given,it is taken’: the Ivorian cinquantenaire and competing history/ies of independence

This article explores competing histories of independence in Côte d'Ivoire. The 2010 commemoration of fifty years of independence led to competing histories about how and if the nation achieved independence in 1960. The postelectoral crisis of 2010–2011 that followed soon afterwards has been interpreted by supporters of the outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo as an attempt by France and the international community to re‐colonise Côte d'Ivoire. The article asks how different versions of this history are connected to different political projects and how they have changed through time. The article will analyse these processes of meaning‐making in a historiology of Ivorian independence, thus contributing to constructivist accounts of nationhood, collective memory and historiography. The paper thus argues that different media of recalling the past in the present, such as commemoration and historiography, should be studied in a complementary manner to understand how (joint) remembering and forgetting are tools and mirrors of nations at work.     

Sir Reader Bullard,Frank Roberts and the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46: Bevin’s officials,perceptions and the adoption of a Cold War mentality in British Soviet Policy

This article evaluates the influence of the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46 on evolving perceptions of the Soviet Union within the British Foreign Office. Utilising records from the National Archives and personal papers, it synthesises the history of the Azerbaijan crisis with studies of Britain’s changing Soviet policy, previously focused solely on the Northern Department and Moscow representative Frank Roberts. In so doing, the paper provides an original diplomatic history which argues that, although Europe remained the strategic priority for Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Iranian developments were of greater significance in prompting a perceptual transition from cooperation to Cold War confrontation.     

Keynes’s legacy: an intellectual’s influence reflected in arts policy

As Western governments re‐examine the economic policies of John Maynard Keynes to solve a global financial crisis believed to be almost as severe as the Great Depression, this article examines his influence on arts policy. The article articulates and examines the central assumptions that underlie the arm’s length policy model, such as Keynes’s preference for semi‐autonomous non‐governmental bodies, and locates the sources of those assumptions and ideas in Keynes’s political philosophy and his involvement in higher education. Knowing this history enables policymakers and arts administrators to recognize how contemporary policy still reflects this thinking.