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Dissecting Putin’s regime ideology Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-07 Maria Snegovaya, Jade McGlynn
Does the Putin regime have an ideology? This question has attracted renewed attention since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Some scholars claim that the war is directly linked to the Pu...
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Two statisms of Putin’s ideology: from proclamations of patriotic values to welfare promises of wartime mobilization Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-24 Ivan Fomin
The article explores how the ideology of Putin’s regime is configured depending on the purposes for which it is used. It examines how the Kremlin’s attempt to mobilize the nation through ideology a...
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A hidden form of mass event: the law, politics, and practice of single pickets in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-18 Nicole M. Daphnis
Single picketing, in which an individual stands in public holding a sign, emerged as a new form of protest in Russia in recent years under the context of increased political repression, and is the ...
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“You should care by prohibiting all this obscenity”: a public policy analysis of the Russian law banning medical and legal transition for transgender people Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-10 Yana Kirey-Sitnikova
Gender-affirming care and legal gender recognition (LGR) have been relatively well developed in Russia since Soviet times. During the past decade, in line with the general authoritarian and conserv...
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Authoritarian succession, rules, and conflicts: Tokayev’s gambit and Kazakhstan’s bloody January of 2022 (Qandy Qantar) Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-10 Gaziz Abishev, Bakhytzhan Kurmanov, Zhaxylyk Sabitov
The authoritarian succession literature indicates that non-democratic regimes install rules and institutions that supposedly ensure a smooth transition from ruler to a chosen successor. However, th...
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State pranking: deceit and humor in Russia-West relations Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-06-29 Stanislav Budnitsky
This article explores pranking as a novel form of manipulative communication in global politics, focusing on the Russian state-aligned phone pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyar...
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Effects of a coup attempt on public attitudes under autocracy: quasi-experimental evidence from Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-06-01 Alexei Zakharov, Ora John Reuter, Vladimir Shuklin, Denis Volkov
Elite schisms are known to destabilize autocracies, but there is little scholarship that examines how such splits affect regime support or perceptions of regime stability. We utilize a unique surve...
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Authoritarian welfare and resilience: politics of child benefits in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-31 Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
Recent literature on authoritarian stability and legitimation has highlighted the role of propaganda and information control, national identity politics, participation technologies and other commun...
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Corruption, development, and the state in Putin’s Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Alexander Strakhov
The paper investigates the determinants of corruption in Russia based on an original survey of 1,376 businesspeople in 39 regions. Regression analysis reveals economically and statistically signifi...
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The regional dimension of Russia’s resilience during its war against Ukraine: an introduction Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Ekaterina Paustyan, Irina Busygina
This symposium challenges the common perception that authoritarian regimes are less resilient than democratic ones because they lack the sources of democratic resilience. We focus on Russia, a pers...
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Elite cohesion and resilience of the Russian regions: the case of Belgorod Oblast Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-18 Ekaterina Paustyan
What accounts for the ability of regional elites to respond to the challenges posed by the Russian war against Ukraine? This study argues that elite cohesion elevates the ability of subnational eli...
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Russian regions in wartime: fiscal and economic effects of the Russo-Ukrainian war Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Andrey Yushkov, Michael Alexeev
This article addresses the economic and fiscal consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine for subnational governments in Russia. Using annual fiscal and economic data, we study how dif...
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“We don’t abandon our own people”: public rhetoric of Russia’s governors during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Nikita Khokhlov
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine tests the resilience of the authoritarian regime in Russia. Most of the elites showed their commitment to the autocrat by publicly supporting the “special military oper...
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The sources of territorial resilience in Putin’s Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-10 Irina Busygina
This article aims to explain the sources of territorial resilience in Russia. It demonstrates that the basis of territorial resilience is the “power vertical,” i.e. the current model of center–regi...
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Federalism at war: Putin’s blame game, regional governors, and the invasion of Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-09 Stanislav Klimovich
Center–regional relations in Putin’s Russia are marked by strict hierarchies, with regional governors serving as agents to the principal–the federal center. This (authoritarian) mode of federalism ...
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The framing of politics in a Ukrainian comedy show: a populist appeal? Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Natalya Ryabinska
In this study we used computer-assisted (Atlas.ti software) quantitative analysis of framing politics in a popular Ukrainian television comedy show Vechernii Kvartal (VKv) to evaluate whether and t...
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Russia’s war strategy: what Chechnya suggests for Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Marat Iliyasov, Yoshiko M. Herrera
While the decision to invade all of Ukraine and Russia’s atrocious behavior and disastrous performance in the war may seem surprising and even irrational, Russia has in fact followed patterns that ...
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Going jingo: a classification of the wartime positions of Russia’s “systemic opposition” parties Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Jan Matti Dollbaum, Seongcheol Kim
This article explores the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on party-system dynamics in Russia by analyzing the war-related communication of the five main “systemic opposition” part...
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Do reforms reduce corruption perceptions? Evidence from police reform in Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-08 Grigore Pop-Eleches, Graeme Robertson
Corruption is a ubiquitous problem, but implementing serious anti-corruption measures is politically hard – the backlash from the corrupt is certain, but the broader political benefits are uncertai...
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God is not back: the long-term effects of Soviet secularism Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Liu Peng
How effective was Soviet secularization and what is its long-term legacy? This paper investigates the lasting effects of Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands Campaign (1950s) on the current level of Orthodox ...
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Language shift in time of war: the abandonment of Russian in Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Volodymyr Kulyk
The article demonstrates an impressive shift from Russian to Ukrainian in war-time Ukraine. I rely on nationwide survey data from before and after February 2022 to analyze the scale and structure o...
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Redistributive policy and redistribution preferences: the effects of the Moscow redevelopment program Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Israel Marques, Alexei Zakharov
How does inclusion in social policy programs strengthen individuals’ support for redistribution, and lead to spillovers in support for future social policy programs? We study a unique dataset of 1,...
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Rainfall variability and labor allocation in Uzbekistan: the role of women’s empowerment Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Vladimir Otrachshenko, Olga Popova, Nargiza Alimukhamedova
Employing a novel georeferenced household survey enriched with data on precipitation and temperature, this paper examines how rainfall variability affects individual labor supply in Uzbekistan, a h...
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There won’t be a free Belarus without a free Ukraine: motivations of Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian war Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-04 Hana Josticova, Huseyn Aliyev
This study examines mobilization motives of Belarusian volunteers participating in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. With an objective to provide an additional explanation as to why individuals mobi...
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Our zona: the impact of decarceration and prison closure on local communities in Kazakhstan Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Gavin Slade, Alexei Trochev
How does the closure of prisons impact local communities where the prison is sited? The paper compares three prison closures in northern and central Kazakhstan through field observations, interview...
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Life through grey-tinted glasses: how do audiences in Latvia psychologically respond to Sputnik Latvia’s destruction narratives of a failed Latvia? Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Aiden Hoyle, Charlotte Wagnsson, Thomas E. Powell, Helma van den Berg, Bertjan Doosje
Although concern about the effects of international audiences consuming Russian state-sponsored media has been expressed, little empirical research examines this. The current study asks how audienc...
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the strengthening of Ukrainian identity among former Soviet immigrants from Ukraine: Israel as a case study Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Svetlana Chachashvili-Bolotin
This research examined the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on identity changes among educated Ukraine-born women who have lived their adult lives in Israel. The data, collected in July 2022, w...
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Voices of the Caucasus: mapping knowledge production on the Caucasus region Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Lala Jumayeva, Aleksey Gunya, Mark Youngman, Lidia Kurbanova, Nino Kemoklidze
There is growing recognition that diversity and representation matter to the intellectual health of fields and disciplines. This article takes stock of knowledge production on the Caucasus region, ...
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Presidential popularity and international crises: an assessment of the rally-‘round-the-flag effect in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-25 Margit Bussmann, Natalia Iost
In times of severe international crises, the domestic public typically becomes more loyal to its government, creating a so-called “rally-'round-the-flag” effect and boosting a political leader’s po...
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Historical consciousness and the consolidation of the opposition: uses of the history of revolution and dissent in Russian protest art, 2008–2012 Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Nadezda Petrusenko
The protests against election fraud in Russia in winter 2011–2012 were the first in the post-Soviet period that were attended by a united opposition, and attracted hundreds of thousands of previous...
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Authoritarian media and foreign protests: evidence from a decade of Russian news Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Yana Otlan, Yulia Kuzmina, Aleksandra Rumiantseva, Katerina Tertytchnaya
The proliferation of protests around the world poses challenges for authoritarian media outlets. While censoring news about protests abroad may push audiences to alternative news sources, their cov...
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Transitional justice options for post-war Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Monika Nalepa, Thomas F. Remington
In February 2022, Vladimir Putin, under the pretext of defending Russians in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, launched an all-out attack on sovereign Ukraine. Since then, Russia has violated multip...
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The best among the connected (men): promotion in the Russian state apparatus Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Guzel Garifullina
Bureaucratic promotion criteria create powerful incentives that shape the behavior of bureaucrats, governance, and regime legitimacy. Yet informal rules governing the functioning of the state appar...
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Dominant party and co-ethnic vote in Russia’s ethnic republics Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Olga Avdeyeva
This study provides the first empirical evidence of ethnic identity bias in the context of the dominant-party authoritarian electoral system in Russia’s multi-ethnic republics. I run vote-choice su...
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From mercenary to legitimate actor? Russian discourses on private military companies Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Karen Philippa Larsen
The Russian private military company (PMC), the Wagner Group, went from being a public secret to openly fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s war in Ukraine. By looking at Russian pro-gover...
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Omnibalancing in China-Russia relations: regime survival and the specter of domestic threats as an impetus for bilateral alignment Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Björn Alexander Düben
Among analysts of China-Russia relations, it has been common to assume that bilateral rapprochement has primarily been rooted in geopolitical, security, and balance-of-power considerations. This ar...
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The willingness of Ukrainians to fight for their own country on the eve of the 2022 Russian invasion Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Oleksandr Reznik
ABSTRACT The study attempts to explain the determined resistance of Ukrainians to Russia’s aggression based on empirical data from a survey of Ukraine’s population obtained on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The willingness to resist has been determined by societal identity, which combines pro-Western orientations and Ukrainian-speaking identity. At the same time, factors of regional affiliation
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Putinism beyond Putin: the political ideas of Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Naryshkin in 2006–20 Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-27 Martin Kragh, Andreas Umland
ABSTRACT This essay adds to previous research of Putinism an investigation of the political thought and foreign outlooks of Russia’s Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin, with a focus on their statements between 2006 to 2020. The paper outlines Patrushev’s and Naryshkin’s thoughts regarding the United States, Ukraine
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The politics of bank failures in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-19 Zuzana Fungáčová, Alexei Karas, Laura Solanko, Laurent Weill
Russia has witnessed a high number of bank failures over the last two decades. Using monthly data for 2002–2020, spanning four election cycles (2004, 2008, 2012, 2018), we test the hypothesis that ...
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A blind and militant attachment: Russian patriotism in comparative perspective Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-13 Michael Alexeev, William Pyle
ABSTRACT Much of the literature on patriotic sentiment in post-Soviet Russia leans on public opinion surveys administered exclusively to Russian citizens. Absent a comparison group, such evidence, while helpful, can leave one adrift in trying to assess the meaning of a particular polling result. Drawing on multiple waves of from the International Social Survey Program and the World Values Survey, we
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Truth with a Z: disinformation, war in Ukraine, and Russia’s contradictory discourse of imperial identity Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Vera Tolz, Stephen Hutchings
ABSTRACT This article offers a qualitative analysis of how, by adopting identity-related discourses whose meanings resonate within a given culture, Russian state propaganda strives to bolster “the truth status” of its Ukraine war claims. These discourses, we argue, have long historical lineages and thus are expected to be familiar to audiences. We identify three such discourses common in many contexts
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Is Putin’s popularity (still) real? A cautionary note on using list experiments to measure popularity in authoritarian regimes Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-15 Timothy Frye, Scott Gehlbach, Kyle L. Marquardt, Ora John Reuter
ABSTRACT Opinion polls suggest that Vladimir Putin has broad support in Russia, but there are concerns that some respondents may be lying to pollsters. Using list experiments, we revisit our earlier work on support for Putin to explore his popularity between late 2020 and mid-2022. Our findings paint an ambiguous portrait. A naive interpretation of our estimates implies that Putin was 10 to 20 percentage
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Perceptions of the past in the post-Soviet space Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Kristin M. Bakke, Kit Rickard, John O'Loughlin
ABSTRACT Honing in on how citizens in the former Soviet Union find themselves in an information competition over their own past, this paper explores whether and why ordinary people’s perceptions of historical events and figures in their country’s past are in line with a Russian-promoted narrative that highlights World War II – known as the “Great Patriotic War” in Russia and some former Soviet states
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Saving lives or saving the economy? Support for the incumbent during the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-28 Kirill Chmel, Aigul Klimova, Nikita Savin
ABSTRACT The spread of COVID-19 sparked debates about whether incumbents should focus on saving lives or the economy. Politicians’ decisions in this dilemma could determine whether they remain in office. “Saving the economy” is predicted to affect re-election chances positively in economic voting theory. However, a public health crisis can shift the electorate’s preferences in favor of expanding healthcare
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Building voting coalitions in electoral authoritarian regimes: a case study of the 2020 constitutional reform in Russia Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Paul Chaisty, Stephen Whitefield
ABSTRACT Electoral authoritarian political systems have a hybrid nature, possessing very significant authoritarian features alongside elections that can produce openings for political change. The risks that elections pose to regimes are diminished if they can build winning coalitions involving voters beyond their core of loyal support. This paper considers how the construction of voter coalitions might
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Rise and fall: social science in Russia before and after the war Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-21 Margarita Zavadskaya, Theodore Gerber
ABSTRACT In this essay, we first briefly recount the post-Soviet history of social science in Russia, with particular attention to the role of international collaborations in spurring its growth, and we review the accelerating attacks on university autonomy and international collaborations that preceded Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in February 2022. Then we consider developments since the
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The art of partial commitment: the politics of military assistance to Ukraine Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-01 Alexander Lanoszka, Jordan Becker
ABSTRACT What sort of military assistance has Ukraine received to date from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members since 2014? What has driven NATO allies’ decisions to provide military assistance to Ukraine? This essay addresses both questions. It offers a preliminary examination of how strategic, economic, and risk considerations might have shaped NATO members’ decisions regarding arms
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Methods in Russian studies: overview of top political science, economics, and area studies journals Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-28 Lanabi La Lova
ABSTRACT How has Russia been studied by political scientists, economists, and scholars in cognate fields who publish in specialized area-specific and top disciplinary journals? To systematically analyze the approaches employed in Russian studies, I collected all publications (1,097 articles) on the country from the top five area studies journals covering the territories of the former USSR, the top
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Plus ça change: getting real about the evolution of Russian studies after 1991 Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 Regina Smyth
ABSTRACT The contributions to this special issue interrogate and revise how social scientists, and in particular political scientists, study the Russian Federation and the independent states that emerged in the collapse of the Soviet empire. They are right to do so. Russia’s escalation of war shined a spotlight on critical research gaps and inaccurate assumptions. Yet, as the field discovered in the
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“Killing nature—killing us”: “Cultural threats” as a fundamental framework for analyzing Indigenous movements against mining in Siberia and the Russian North Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-18 Andrey Plotnitskiy, Arnab Roy Chowdhury
ABSTRACT The Shor people are protesting the ongoing mining of coal in the southern Kemerovo region of Siberia, while the Izhma Komi people are contesting the extraction of oil in the northern Komi Republic (Northwestern Federal District). The theory of “political opportunities” states that movements emerge when opportune moments create spaces for these, but we argue that in illiberal spaces, movements
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Commitment problems and the failure of the Minsk process: the second-order commitment challenge Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-17 Paul D’Anieri
ABSTRACT Understanding why the Minsk process failed is essential both for explaining why Russia invaded in 2022 and for ensuring that a new peace settlement does not prove similarly ineffective. Many analyses point to the conflicting goals of the combatants as the basic obstacle to peace. However, rationalist approaches show that some peace agreement should always be preferable to war. The commitment
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Critical approaches and research on inequality in Russian studies: the need for visibility and legitimization Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-08 Guzel Yusupova
ABSTRACT This essay suggests legitimizing and promoting critical approaches in Russian studies, as well as acknowledging the multifaceted diversity within Russian society. This diversity needs to be taken into serious consideration in any research on Russia. Moreover, various levels of inequality that this rich diversity both creates and challenges should be reflected upon in multidisciplinary research
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Survey research in Russia: in the shadow of war Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Bryn Rosenfeld
ABSTRACT Amid ongoing uncertainty, regular surveying in Russia continues to date and collaborations with Western academics have too. These developments offer some basis for cautious optimism. Yet they also raise critical questions about the practice of survey research in repressive environments. Are Russians less willing today to respond to surveys? Are they less willing to answer sensitive questions
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On double miss in Russian studies: can social and political psychology help? Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
ABSTRACT This essay highlights the potential analytical leverage from the import of recent approaches in social and political psychology into the study of politics in Russia. The core argument is that social psychology offers suitable conceptual and analytical tools to explore the political phenomena that have come to the forefront of social and political processes in Russia over the past decade. Social
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Political ethnography and Russian studies in a time of conflict Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-24 Jeremy Morris
ABSTRACT As reliable and unfiltered access to Russia and Russians becomes a fraught issue for social scientists who wish to conduct surveys, focus groups, do ethnographies, or interview elite actors, the war presents scholars with an opportunity to reflect on questions of what data collection means, and on better communication between quantitative and qualitative scholars. Similarly, it forces us confront
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Fear of punishment as a driver of survey misreporting and item non-response in Russia and its neighbors Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 William M. Reisinger, Marina Zaloznaya, Byung-Deuk Woo
ABSTRACT Following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government sharply broadened what actions were illegal and raised the level of punishment. Many more topics of interest to survey researchers became politically sensitive. Questions about these topics may generate high levels of misleading responses and question-specific (item) non-responses, both of which introduce biases that undermine
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Exogenous shock and Russian studies Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Vladimir Gel’man
ABSTRACT The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a major exogenous shock, which greatly affected the scholarly field of Russian studies. Not only did some previous theoretical lenses and analytic approaches become outdated, but the intellectual and institutional infrastructure of scholarship in Russian studies also faced major challenges. In a sense, these changes were similar to the effects
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Branching out or inwards? The logic of fractals in Russian studies Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Tomila Lankina
ABSTRACT This essay reflects upon the consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine on the sub-field of Russian studies in political science. I argue that the war has exposed some blind spots in our knowledge. Notably, it has left us struggling to understand the historically deprived communities in Russia whose values, sentiments, and vulnerabilities may be indirect buttresses to both support for Putin
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Credibility revolution and the future of Russian studies Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Alexander Libman
ABSTRACT The credibility revolution transformed quantitative social sciences and was both a curse and a blessing for Russian studies. On the one hand, Russia turned out to be an attractive field for experimentalist research, which allowed Russian studies to gain unprecedented recognition in the broader disciplines. On the other hand, a focus on causal identification could have contributed to insufficient
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Demographic and attitudinal legacies of the Armenian genocide Post-Sov. Aff. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-15 Max Schaub
ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of the first-ever representative survey on the demographic and attitudinal legacies of the Armenian genocide. The data, collected in 2018, maps the varied geographical origins of the citizens of contemporary Armenia and traces their links to the genocide. Around half of contemporary Armenians descend from refugees of the genocide, while about a third had family