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"Public opinion Russia (Federation)."
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Between two fires : truth, ambition, and compromise in Putin's Russia
\"From a leading journalist in Moscow and a correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Is Russia Fascist?
In Is Russia Fascist?, Marlene Laruelle argues that the charge of \"fascism\" has become a strategic narrative of the current world order. Vladimir Putin's regime has increasingly been accused of embracing fascism, supposedly evidenced by Russia's annexation of Crimea, its historical revisionism, attacks on liberal democratic values, and its support for far-right movements in Europe. But at the same time Russia has branded itself as the world's preeminent antifascist power because of its sacrifices during the Second World War while it has also emphasized how opponents to the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe collaborated with Nazi Germany.
Laruelle closely analyzes accusations of fascism toward Russia, soberly assessing both their origins and their accuracy. By labeling ideological opponents as fascist, regardless of their actual values or actions, geopolitical rivals are able to frame their own vision of the world and claim the moral high ground. Through a detailed examination of the Russian domestic scene and the Kremlin's foreign policy rationales, Laruelle disentangles the foundation for, meaning, and validity of accusations of fascism in and around Russia. Is Russia Fascist? shows that the efforts to label opponents as fascist is ultimately an attempt to determine the role of Russia in Europe's future.
eBook
Bringing Stalin back in : memory politics and the creation of a useable past in Putin's Russia
While Joseph Stalin is commonly reviled in the West as a murderous tyrant who committed egregious human rights abuses against his own people, in Russia he is often positively viewed as the symbol of Soviet-era stability and state power. How can there be such a disparity in perspectives? Utilizing an ethnographic approach, extensive interview data, and critical discourse analysis, this book examines the ways that the political elite in Russia are able to control and manipulate historical discourse about the Stalin period in order to advance their own political objectives. Appropriating the Stalinist discourse, they minimize or ignore outright crimes of the Soviet period, and instead focus on positive aspects of Stalin's rule, especially his role in leading the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War. Advancing the concepts of \"preventive\" and \"complex\" co-optation, this book analyzes how elites in Russia inhibit the emergence of groups that espouse alternative narratives, while promoting message-friendly groups that are in line with the Kremlin's agenda. Bringing the resources of the state to bear, the Russian elite are able to co-opt multiple avenues of discourse formulation and dissemination. Elite-sponsored discourse positions Stalin as the symbol of a strong, centralized state that was capable of great achievements, despite great cost, enabling favorably portrayals of Stalin as part of a tradition of harsh but effective rulers in Russian history, such as Peter the Great. This strong state discourse is used to legitimize the return of authoritarianism in Russia today.
BOOK
The Agony of the Russian idea
Boris Yeltsin's attempts at democratic reform have plunged a long troubled Russia even further into turmoil. This dramatic break with the Soviet past has left Russia politically fragmented and riddled with corruption, its people with little hope for the future. In a fascinating account for anyone interested in Russia's current political struggles, Tim McDaniel explores the inability of all its leaders over the last two centuries--tsars and Communist rulers alike--to create the foundations of a viable modern society. The problem then and now, he argues, is rooted in a cultural trap endemic to Russian society and linked to a unique sense of destiny embodied by the \"Russian idea.\"
In its most basic sense, the Russian idea is the belief that Russia can forge a path in the modern world that sets itself apart from the West through adherence to shared beliefs, community, and equality. These cultural values, according to McDaniel, have mainly reversed the values of Western society rather than having provided a real alternative to them. By relying on the Russian idea in their programs of change, dictatorial governments almost unavoidably precipitated social breakdown.
When the Yeltsin government declared war on the Communist past, it broke with deeply held Russian values and traditions. McDaniel shows that in cutting people off from their pasts and promoting the West as the sole model of modernity, the reformers have simultaneously undermined the foundations of Russian morality and the people's sense of a future. Unwittingly, the Yeltsin government has thereby annihilated its own authority.
McDaniel lived in Russia for three years during both the Communist and post-Communist periods. Basing his analysis on broad historical research, extensive travels, countless interviews and conversations, and friendships with Russians from all walks of life, McDaniel emphasizes the perils of assuming that Russians understand the world in the same way that we do, and so can and should become like us. Challenging and provocative in its claims, this book is intended for anyone seeking to understand Russia's attempts to create a new society.
eBook
Is non-Western democracy possible? : a russian perspective
\"This book, with theoretical and practical analyses of comparative political systems of Eastern countries (Asia and Africa), their political process and political cultures, describes and analyses the influence of political culture on political process in the Eastern world. It gives readers an opportunity to make a comparative appraisal of maturity of civil society in these countries as well as their specifics in political interactions and internal political competition seen through the eyes of a group of distinguished Russian researchers. The book concentrates also on specifics of political-economic and political modernization in the East, and assesses the prospects of an emergence of a Western as well as a non-Western democracy in the framework of Eastern political transformations. It also explains why the one-dimensional spread of democracy -- completely negating or neglecting regional political-cultural specifics -- may lead to war among civilizations instead of the formation of a more just and fair system of democratic governance\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Instrumentalisation of Mass Media in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes
Focusing on the case of Russia during Putins first two presidential terms, this book examines media manipulation strategies in electoral authoritarian regimes.Which instruments and approaches do incumbent elites employ to skew media coverage in favour of their preferred candidate in a presidential election?.
eBook
The Putin mystique : inside Russia's power cult
\"The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man's riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt. Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin's often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection. In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has travelled throughout Russia to report on modern politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book, which has been translated into 10 languages, is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin\"--Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Transitional citizens : voters and what influences them in the new Russia
This book looks at the newly empowered citizens of Russia's protodemocracy facing choices at the ballot box that just a few years ago, under dictatorial rule, they could not have dreamt of. Colton finds that despite their unfamiliarity with democracy, subjects-turned-citizens learn about their electoral options from peers and the mass media.
eBook
The case for Latvia : disinformation campaigns against a small nation : fourteen hard questions and straight answers about a Baltic country
What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: \"Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917\", \"Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family\", \"Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the German.
Book
Russia in the wake of the cold war : perceptions and prejudices
Amid widespread and increasing alarm in Western strategic and foreign policy circles following Russia's capture of Crimea, support for rebels in Ukraine, and military intervention in Syria, this study provides a timely and sophisticated analysis of the nature and intentions of post-Soviet government under President Vladimir Putin.
eBook