Tag: russia

Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

The following is an excerpt from Chris Miller’s Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia. When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What… Continue Reading Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

Russia and the former Soviet Union: A Recommended Reading List

If you’ve been following recent events, you may have seen that Russia has invaded Ukraine. Last week, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of its neighbors to the southwest. It marked a major escalation between the countries, which had been in a state of conflict since 2014. Russia and Ukraine were also two of the largest republics responsible… Continue Reading Russia and the former Soviet Union: A Recommended Reading List

Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Today we welcome a guest post from Amanda Brickell Bellows, author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, out now from UNC Press. The abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the… Continue Reading Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Patryk Babiracki: Showcasing Hard Power, Russia Reveals Her Longstanding Soft Spot

In recent months, Vladimir Putin has been playing hardball with the world. Yet Russia’s bullying and bravado can be seen as signs of a longstanding weakness. Continue Reading Patryk Babiracki: Showcasing Hard Power, Russia Reveals Her Longstanding Soft Spot

Patryk Babiracki: Post-Soviet Ukraine: Not Unlike Postwar Poland. What Putin’s Russia (and the West) Can Learn from the Cold War

With oil prices falling, the ruble is tumbling down, and Russia’s immediate economic prospects are grim. But the Russian leaders’ political will to retain Ukraine is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The lands that became modern Ukraine had been part of Russian empire for three and a half centuries. Vladimir Putin has shown inexhaustible energy in obstructing Ukraine’s rapprochement with the West; Ukraine’s prospective successes in integrating with the EU (or, in a more adventurous scenario, with NATO) would be a heavy blow to Russia’s prestige and to Mr. Putin’s ego. Therefore on the long run, it seems unlikely that any person or institution can prevent the Russian president and his cronies from wresting Ukraine back firmly into the Russian orbit. Continue Reading Patryk Babiracki: Post-Soviet Ukraine: Not Unlike Postwar Poland. What Putin’s Russia (and the West) Can Learn from the Cold War

Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Putin is pushing a new nationalist conservatism with a strong strain of anti-Americanism, promoting a vision of the United States as the primary conspirator pulling strings to foster international chaos and regime change.

As former Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul noted recently in the New Yorker, “Putin has a theory of American power that has some empirical basis.” The CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the United States bombed Belgrade to remove a dictator, and there is, of course, Iraq. However, a close examination of American policy toward Poland—the country the United States pushed hardest to break from the Soviet sphere in the 1980s—brings to the fore just how far the Russian president’s views are removed from reality. The United States is not nearly the revolutionary mastermind Putin seems to think it is. Continue Reading Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Michael H. Hunt: The Ukraine Crisis and the Rules Great Powers Play By

The United States has championed a values-based approach with a strong missionary impulse behind it. Woodrow Wilson provided its first full-blown articulation, and post-World War II policy saw to its full-blown application. Holding a dominant global position, Washington sought with varying degrees of urgency and determination to advance a basket of ideological goods. U.S. leaders have articulated these goods in a variety of ways such as “democracy,” “free-market capitalism,” and “human rights.” But underlying all these formulations is a strong and distinctly American belief in the autonomy of the individual and a commitment to political liberty and limited state power. In the rhetoric of American statecraft these notions are a leitmotiv. They have generally set the direction of U.S. policy responses to problems of the sort that Ukraine poses. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: The Ukraine Crisis and the Rules Great Powers Play By

Zubok among Washington Post’s Best Books of 2008

The Washington Post published its Holiday Guide yesterday, featuring the Best Books of 2008. Included in “The World” section is Vladislav Zubok’s A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. At the beginning of the year, Richard Rhodes reviewed Zubok’s book along with Melvyn Leffler’s For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the… Continue Reading Zubok among Washington Post’s Best Books of 2008