Post-Soviet Borders

Post-Soviet Borders PDF

Author: Sabine von Löwis

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-18

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1000642887

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book investigates how borders in former Soviet Union territories have evolved and shifted in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to fifteen independent states and numerous de facto states; but this process of rebordering is not finished, and social, economic, infrastructural, cultural and political networks and spaces continue to develop. This book explores the intersection between these geopolitical shifts and the individual lived experience, drawing on cases from across border regions in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Throughout, the book introduces and frames the case studies with well-informed theoretical, conceptual and methodological overviews that situate them within border studies in general and post-Soviet border spaces in particular. Overall, the book demonstrates that like a kaleidoscope, the dynamic elements in these newly evolved border regions are similar yet strikingly different in their juxtapositions, with the appearance of new configurations often dependent on changing geopolitical constellations. This timely guide to the post-Soviet world thirty years after the Cold War will be of interest to researchers across border studies, politics, geography, social anthropology, history, Eastern European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and Caucasian Studies.

Contested Territory

Contested Territory PDF

Author: Tuomas Forsberg

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Certainly the territorial disputes within the former Soviet Union have become front page news recently. This collection of essays offers some historical perspective to contemporary events by providing an analysis of eight potential or actual border disputes stemming from Soviet expansion at the end of World War II, and a discussion of the regional identities of annexed border regions within Russia. Specific treatment is given to territorial disputes concerning: Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, Carpatho-Ukraine, Eastern Poland, East Prussia, Abrene, the East of Narva and Petserimaa, Karelia, and the Kurile Islands. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Crossing Borders

Crossing Borders PDF

Author: Michael David-Fox

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0822980924

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Crossing Borders deconstructs contemporary theories of Soviet history from the revolution through the Stalin period, and offers new interpretations based on a transnational perspective. To Michael David-Fox, Soviet history was shaped by interactions across its borders. By reexamining conceptions of modernity, ideology, and cultural transformation, he challenges the polarizing camps of Soviet exceptionalism and shared modernity and instead strives for a theoretical and empirical middle ground as the basis for a creative and richly textured analysis. Discussions of Soviet modernity have tended to see the Soviet state either as an archaic holdover from the Russian past, or as merely another form of conventional modernity. David-Fox instead considers the Soviet Union in its own light—as a seismic shift from tsarist society that attracted influential visitors from the pacifist Left to the fascist Right. By reassembling Russian legacies, as he shows, the Soviet system evolved into a complex "intelligentsia-statist" form that introduced an array of novel agendas and practices, many embodied in the unique structures of the party-state. Crossing Borders demonstrates the need for a new interpretation of the Russian-Soviet historical trajectory—one that strikes a balance between the particular and the universal.

Frontier Encounters

Frontier Encounters PDF

Author: Franck Billé

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1906924872

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

Power and Conflict in Russia’s Borderlands

Power and Conflict in Russia’s Borderlands PDF

Author: Helena Rytövuori-Apunen

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-10-21

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1788316924

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

As Cold War battle lines are seemingly re-drawn, Russia's various 'frozen' war zones (ongoing separatist conflicts) are often cited as particularly volatile and assumed by some Western commentators and policymakers to be 'next' on Putin's 'wish list'. But, as Helena Rytövuori-Apunen demonstrates here, this is a gross (and dangerous) oversimplification that will only serve to fuel the vicious circle of reciprocal military escalation. Drawing on a range of empirical research and across separatist conflicts in Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia), Moldova (Transnistria and Gagauzia) and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh) and the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, her timely book provides a balanced assessment and critique of the assumptions and misunderstandings that inform mainstream discussions, as well as placing the conflicts in their proper and complex historical contexts. At a time when there is an increasing tendency to view Russia as the source of all instability in Eastern Europe, Power and Conflict in Russia's Borderlands is essential reading for anyone interested in the geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia, as well as policymakers and practitioners of peace/conflict resolution studies.

Post-Cold War Borders

Post-Cold War Borders PDF

Author: Jussi Laine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0429957106

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the aftermath of the Ukraine crises, borders within the wider post-Cold War and post-Soviet context have become a key issue for international relations and public political debate. These borders are frequently viewed in terms of military preparedness and confrontation, but behind armed territorial conflicts there has been a broader shift in the regional balance of power and sovereignty. This book explores border conflicts in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood via a detailed focus on state power and sovereignty, set in the context of post-Cold war politics and international relations. By identifying changing definitions of sovereignty and political space the authors highlight competing strategies of legitimising and challenging borders that have emerged as a result of geopolitical transformations of the last three decades. This book uses comparative studies to examine country specific variation in border negotiation and conflict, and pays close attention to shifts in political debates that have taken place between the end of State Socialism, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the Ukraine crises. From this angle, Post-Cold War Borders sheds new light on change and variation in the political rhetoric of the EU, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and neighbouring EU member countries. Ultimately, the book aims to provide a new interpretation of changes in international order and how they relate to shifting concepts of sovereignty and territoriality in post-Cold war Europe. Shedding new light on negotiation and conflict over post-Soviet borders, this book will be of interest to students, researchers and policy makers in the fields of Russian and East European studies, international relations, geography, border studies and politics.

Institutions of Isolation

Institutions of Isolation PDF

Author: Andrea M. Chandler

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780773517172

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study examines why the USSR - a political system that originally prided itself on its internationalism - devoted such efforts to controlling its borders, sealing its society from the outside world. It provides a revealing case study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet state.

Art beyond Borders

Art beyond Borders PDF

Author: Jérôme Bazin

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 9633866804

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and with the West between 1945 and 1989. During the Cold War the exchange of artistic ideas and products united Europe’s avant-garde in a most remarkable way. Despite the Iron Curtain and national and political borders there existed a constant flow of artists, artworks, artistic ideas and practices. The geographic borders of these exchanges have yet to be clearly defined. How were networks, centers, peripheries (local, national and international), scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism? The literature on the art of Eastern Europe provides a great deal of factual knowledge about a vast cultural space, but mostly through the prism of stereotypes and national preoccupations. By discussing artworks, studying the writings on art, observing artistic evolution and artists’ strategies, as well as the influence of political authorities, art dealers and art critics, the essays in Art beyond Borders compose a transnational history of arts in the Soviet satellite countries in the post war period.

Where Currents Meet

Where Currents Meet PDF

Author: Tanya Zaharchenko

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9633861195

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet society shows how the inhabitants in Ukraine?s east negotiate the historical legacy they have inherited. Zaharchenko approaches contemporary Ukrainian literature at the intersection of memory studies and border studies, and her analysis adds a new voice to an ongoing exploration of cultural and historical discourses in Ukraine. The scholarly journey through storylines explores the ways in which younger writers in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), a diverse, dynamic, but under-studied border city in east Ukraine today, come to grips with a traumatized post-Soviet cultural landscape. Zaharchenko?s book examines the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andre? Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev and others, introducing them as a ?doubletake? generation who came of age during the Soviet Union?s collapse and as adults, revisit this experience in their novels. Filling the space between society and the state, local literary texts have turned into forms of historical memory and agents of political life. ÿ

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes