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Azerbaijan: Brutality, Corruption, and yet a Thriving Oil Deal with the EU
The EC’s continued drilling and purchasing of oil does not encourage policy reform in Azerbaijan. Rather, it might make reform impossible.
Ten Years of Eastern Partnership in Azerbaijan: Time to Take Serious Steps
Within Azerbaijan itself, both the population and the political establishment see their future with Europe. This stance dictates prioritizing policies that would move the country closer to both the EU...
How Oil Producers Promote Renewable Energy: Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan Compared
Why do some oil-producing countries choose to deploy renewable energy sources at a faster rate and more extensively than others?
A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada
Bojanowska’s book examines a travelogue by Ivan Goncharov, better known as the author of the novel Oblomov, using his eyewitness account as a window onto imperial history of the 19th...
Teymur Ateşli: A Traitor-Hero for the Cold-War Era
For an ethnically Turkish man from the Soviet Union, fighting with the Nazis was no betrayal.
Tweeting Alone: Social Media Use and Coalition-Building by Alexei Navalny and the Russian Communist Party
The more political actors engage with their audience online, the more important it becomes not whether but how they do so. This includes authoritarian regimes with restricted media spheres, where...
Russia is Attacking Western Liberal Democracies
Russia is engaging in an orchestrated, strategic campaign whose purpose is to erode liberal democracy in Europe and the United States.
Putin, Forever: The Russian President Remains as Inscrutable as Ever
Is Vladimir Putin a master manipulator? Or is he a genius of improvisation? Does he have a master strategy which governs his every move, carefully thought out in advance –...
Admitted as a Tourist, Tried as a Spy
Then I was asked[...] to name the former US secret service workers that he believed were teaching at NYU, and to recount the anti-Russian information that they believed was being...
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Russian Christmas Comes But Once a Year
In the United States, the Christmas season is winding down — or concluded depending on whom you speak to. The “most wonderful time of the year” typically ends after the...
Evolution of Latinization in Turkic states: From Sovietization to Nationalization
Central Asia's current process of Latinization is strongly linked to the legitimization of power, the construction of postcolonial identity, and the search for geopolitical balance between Russia and Turkey. At...
Fighting HIV/AIDS in Russia: Challenges, Successes, and Working in a Pandemic
On January 13th, the Jordan Center and the Harriman Institute co-hosted a panel on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia as part of the NYC-Russia Public Policy Series. Panelists included Ulla...
Dangerous Liaisons: Ukraine and Western Slavists
Writing in the middle of a crisis is always dangerous.
Russia and Marxism in Polish Political Thought, Part II
The views on Marxism of philosopher and legal theoretician Leszek Nowak were shared by a number of other important political thinkers of the Polish interwar period, including Roman Dmowski, Józef...
The Last Will and Testament of Sergei Esenin: Cultural History of a Mystification, Part III
In the end, he was released as partially insane, for it was noted that he considered himself an incarnation of the Buddha and believed that he desperately needed money to...
Kiss Me, Darling: The Monstrous in "The Bear's Wedding" (1926)
As the sole example of early Soviet supernatural horror (or perhaps even horror as such), "The Bear's Wedding" offers insight into the shape of the dreadful in the early Soviet...
Verbal Judo, or How Not to Commemorate International Holocaust Memorial Day
The President's speech was targeted less at Holocaust deniers than at political opponents, who dare to dispute post-Soviet Russia's official scenario of power, which privileges its people's tragic, heroic, and,...
Money Is Not Enough: The Role of Economic Incentives in Cooperative Nonproliferation Initiatives
The current main threats to Russian nuclear materials are determined insiders, coupled with a questionable commitment by Moscow to ensuring sustainability and improving security culture.
New-Generation Warfare and the Fringe Right: How Russian Interference Impacts Right-Wing Extremism in the US, Part III
The white supremacist fascination with Putin’s Russia is not alarming only because it represents a distasteful admiration for anti-democratic and authoritarian values but also because it presents a direct threat...