Putin's Labor Dilemma

Putin's Labor Dilemma PDF

Author: Stephen Crowley

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 150175629X

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In Putin's Labor Dilemma, Stephen Crowley investigates how the fear of labor protest has inhibited substantial economic transformation in Russia. Putin boasts he has the backing of workers in the country's industrial heartland, but as economic growth slows in Russia, reviving the economy will require restructuring the country's industrial landscape. At the same time, doing so threatens to generate protest and instability from a key regime constituency. However, continuing to prop up Russia's Soviet-era workplaces, writes Crowley, could lead to declining wages and economic stagnation, threatening protest and instability. Crowley explores the dynamics of a Russian labor market that generally avoids mass unemployment, the potentially explosive role of Russia's monotowns, conflicts generated by massive downsizing in "Russia's Detroit" (Tol'yatti), and the rapid politicization of the truck drivers movement. Labor protests currently show little sign of threatening Putin's hold on power, but the manner in which they are being conducted point to substantial chronic problems that will be difficult to resolve. Putin's Labor Dilemma demonstrates that the Russian economy must either find new sources of economic growth or face stagnation. Either scenario—market reforms or economic stagnation—raises the possibility, even probability, of destabilizing social unrest.

Between Two Fires

Between Two Fires PDF

Author: Joshua Yaffa

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1524760595

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From a leading journalist in Moscow and correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule "Unforgettable. . . . This is a book about Putin's Russia that is unlike any other." --Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country's most remarkable figures--from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians--who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. Between Two Fires chronicles the lives of a number of strivers who understand that their dreams are best--or only--realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles the director of the country's main television channel, an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions, and many others. The result is an intimate and probing portrait of a nation that is much discussed yet little understood. By showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and frequently repressive state--as often by choice as under threat of force--Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.

Becoming Madam Chancellor

Becoming Madam Chancellor PDF

Author: Joyce Marie Mushaben

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-07

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1108417736

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The first English-language scholarly book to provide an overview of the Angela Merkel's career and influence.

Russia After the Global Economic Crisis

Russia After the Global Economic Crisis PDF

Author: Anders Åslund

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0881325147

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Russia After the Global Economic Crisis examines this important country after the financial crisis of 2007–09. The second book from The Russia Balance Sheet Project, a collaboration of two of the world's preeminent research institutions, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), not only assesses Russia's international and domestic policy challenges but also provides an all-encompassing review of this important country's foreign and domestic issues. The authors consider foreign policy, Russia and its neighbors, climate change, Russia's role in the world, domestic politics, and corruption.

The Siberian Curse

The Siberian Curse PDF

Author: Fiona Hill

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2003-11-04

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0815796188

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Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Union's collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy argue that Russia's geography, history, and monumental mistakes perpetrated by Soviet planners have locked it into a dead-end path to economic ruin. Shattering a number of myths that have long persisted in the West and in Russia, The Siberian Curse explains why Russia's greatest assets––its gigantic size and Siberia's natural resources––are now the source of one its greatest weaknesses. For seventy years, driven by ideological zeal and the imperative to colonize and industrialize its vast frontiers, communist planners forced people to live in Siberia. They did this in true totalitarian fashion by using the GULAG prison system and slave labor to build huge factories and million-person cities to support them. Today, tens of millions of people and thousands of large-scale industrial enterprises languish in the cold and distant places communist planners put them––not where market forces or free choice would have placed them. Russian leaders still believe that an industrialized Siberia is the key to Russia's prosperity. As a result, the country is burdened by the ever-increasing costs of subsidizing economic activity in some of the most forbidding places on the planet. Russia pays a steep price for continuing this folly––it wastes the very resources it needs to recover from the ravages of communism. Hill and Gaddy contend that Russia's future prosperity requires that it finally throw off the shackles of its Soviet past, by shrinking Siberia's cities. Only by facilitating the relocation of population to western Russia, closer to Europe and its markets, can Russia achieve sustainable economic growth. Unfortunately for Russia, there is no historical precedent for shrinking cities on the scale that will be required. Downsizing Siberia will be a costly and wrenching proce

The Far Right Today

The Far Right Today PDF

Author: Cas Mudde

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-10-25

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 150953685X

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The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

What is Media Archaeology?

What is Media Archaeology? PDF

Author: Jussi Parikka

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0745661394

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This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past. Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities. What is Media Archaeology? advances an innovative theoretical position while also presenting an engaging and accessible overview for students of media, film and cultural studies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the interdisciplinary ties between art, technology and media.

Putin's Labor Dilemma

Putin's Labor Dilemma PDF

Author: Stephen Crowley

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1501756303

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In Putin's Labor Dilemma, Stephen Crowley investigates how the fear of labor protest has inhibited substantial economic transformation in Russia. Putin boasts he has the backing of workers in the country's industrial heartland, but as economic growth slows in Russia, reviving the economy will require restructuring the country's industrial landscape. At the same time, doing so threatens to generate protest and instability from a key regime constituency. However, continuing to prop up Russia's Soviet-era workplaces, writes Crowley, could lead to declining wages and economic stagnation, threatening protest and instability. Crowley explores the dynamics of a Russian labor market that generally avoids mass unemployment, the potentially explosive role of Russia's monotowns, conflicts generated by massive downsizing in "Russia's Detroit" (Tol'yatti), and the rapid politicization of the truck drivers movement. Labor protests currently show little sign of threatening Putin's hold on power, but the manner in which they are being conducted point to substantial chronic problems that will be difficult to resolve. Putin's Labor Dilemma demonstrates that the Russian economy must either find new sources of economic growth or face stagnation. Either scenario—market reforms or economic stagnation—raises the possibility, even probability, of destabilizing social unrest.

Post-Soviet Social

Post-Soviet Social PDF

Author: Stephen J. Collier

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-08-08

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1400840422

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The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, Post-Soviet Social uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.