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1. Book Talk. "Avant-Garde Post– Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union"

Author:
Marijeta Bozovic and Mark Lipovetsky
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
What does leftist art look like in the wake of state socialism? In recent years, Russian-language avant-garde poetry has been seeking the answers to this question. Marijeta Bozovic follows a constellation of poets at the center of a contemporary literary movement that is bringing radical art out of the Soviet shadow: Kirill Medvedev, Pavel Arseniev, Aleksandr Skidan, Dmitry Golynko, Roman Osminkin, Keti Chukhrov, and Galina Rymbu. While their formal experiments range widely, all share a commitment to explicitly political poetry. Each one, in turn, has become a hub in a growing new-left network across the former Second World.
Topic:
Arts, Culture, Leftist Politics, Soviet Union, and Poetry
Political Geography:
Post-Soviet Europe

2. Emerging Contours of a New, Just World

Author:
B. Gryzlov, P. Frolov, and V. Vanke
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
Thirty-two years ago, an event took place that American political scientist Francis Fukuyama claimed marked the “end of history.” It was argued that the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world political scene and the end of the Soviet socialist project meant that there was no socioeconomic alternative to a liberal capitalist world order – a system that puts the individual above society and private business above national interests and gives overconsumption priority over progress. What did the collapse of the Soviet system, the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, and the breakup of the Eastern bloc lead to? In the wake of all this and with political support from their governments, British, German, French, and American companies received unlimited sway over a market representing nearly 420 million people, of whom 290 million represented the total population of former Soviet republics and the other 130 million the population of former Eastern bloc countries. In addition to vast opportunities for the sale of consumer and other goods, Western countries gained access to rich natural resources, including natural gas and oil, and this brought about unprecedented industrial growth in Western Europe.
Topic:
History, Soviet Union, Post-Soviet Space, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Soviet Union, South Ossetia, and Post-Soviet Europe

3. The Fate of Flat Tax in the EU countries

Author:
Krassen Stanchev
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
Since 1989, flat tax (FT) reforms have been attempted in Europe and the EU only by ex-communist countries and Iceland. In the 1990s all ex-communist countries lowered and simplified their income taxes, often starting with corporate taxes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s they also reformed their social security systems. In many respects the tax reforms have never stopped, but with regard to income taxation they are less radical than in the 1990s and at the turn of this century. Even when there were reforms re-establishing progressive taxation, they have almost never returned to complex sets of nominal rates and a steep vertical ladder of progressive thresholds. This report attempts to reconstruct the reasons why EU countries moved to introduce proportional taxation on either corporate or personal income, or both, as well as the reasons behind five of them returning to progressive taxation. These reforms happened in different political and economic contexts. It would be difficult to identify unequivocal causality between flattening taxes and economic performance. However, the report compares the dynamics of economic growth and factors related to competitiveness for periods before and after the reforms were launched. The same effort has been made for indicators of wealth and disposable income. The analysis allows for a discussion of lessons learnt and of the prospects for further reforms. The report concludes that it seems impossible to prove that FT systems have been a key contributor to higher economic growth. However, it does seem that, if the social security contributions remain relatively stable and are financed by other tax revenues, they have a positive impact on fiscal performance and general welfare.
Topic:
Reform, European Union, Economic Growth, Tax Systems, Corporate Tax, and Flat Tax
Political Geography:
Europe and Post-Soviet Europe

4. Launching USAID Programs in the New Independent States

Author:
Desaix Myers
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
We were in the dark. Launching an aid program as the Soviet Union collapsed, covering 12 countries across 11 time zones from Kiev to Vladivostok, took the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into totally new territory. Most of us had spent careers in the tropics. Almost no one in USAID knew anything about Russia or the former Soviet Union. No one spoke Russian. In June 1992, I joined USAID’s recently formed New Independent States (NIS) Taskforce as Russia Desk Officer. My knowledge of Russia consisted of what I had learned from “Russian Lit in Translation” sophomore year and a one-week trip with the University of California to see about a possible partnership with the university in Puschino, a small town dedicated to microbiology 90 kilometers south of Moscow. Concerned that Puschino, formerly a closed city, might be a center for research on biological warfare, we went to the CIA for reassurance—they said it wasn’t.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Memoir, USAID, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Europe and Post-Soviet Europe

5. Playing the Kinship Card in Communist Bulgaria

Author:
Jonathan B. Rickert
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
In 1986, Secretary of State George Shultz tasked Deputy Secretary John Whitehead with responsibility for overseeing U.S. relations with Eastern Europe. Following the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, there were some hints of a possible adjustment of Soviet policies toward the so-called “satellite” countries of Eastern Europe. The naming of Whitehead to oversee U.S. relations with the region demonstrated the importance the administration placed on it and the hope that we could promote, encourage, or induce some positive changes there. As Whitehead described it in his autobiography, A Life in Leadership, his initial plan for fulfilling his mandate was “to visit those countries, tell the governmental leaders our concerns about their undemocratic conduct and their human rights violations, listen to their concerns, and, of course, dutifully show them that we regarded them as ‘differentiated’ countries in accordance with official policy.” It was in this context that he arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I was serving as Deputy Chief of Mission, at the end of an initial swing through the area that had taken him to Hungary, Poland, and Romania in November 1986.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Memoir, and Civil Services
Political Geography:
Bulgaria and Post-Soviet Europe

6. Spreading Americana in a Post-Soviet World

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
My 1990 visit to Russia was revelatory. As Director of the U.S. Information Agency’s (USIA) Regional Program Office in Vienna, I traveled to all the post-communist European countries to determine how our printing, photographic, computer, management, exhibit and library services could assist our embassies there. Russia was a world of chaos, crooks, collapse, and courage in those years. I walked through downtown Moscow past dumpy, shabby women in bulging, thick coats. They carried string bags with one cabbage, a few potatoes, and rarely, a small, bloody paper packet of meat. They shoved through the crowds on broad sidewalks caught in swirling snow. People, mostly women, stood almost shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk selling: a single dining room chair, a half dozen slips, a couple pairs of old shoes, an old bra. I had never seen such desperate, tiny commerce outside the world’s poorest countries. Seventy years of harsh, often cruel, Soviet rule followed communism’s early idealism. It fed corruption, and eventually brought economic collapse and the end for Soviet government by 1991. Central planning for a vast economy was too difficult to manage efficiently.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Memoir, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
United States of America and Post-Soviet Europe

7. Three decades of Russian Policy in the European Part of the Post-Soviet Space: Swimming Against the Current

Author:
Arkady Moshes and Ryhor Nizhnikau
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
Abstract:
The successful pursuit of Russia’s great-power status and its recognition by the West imply the preservation of pre-eminent positions, above all in the European part of the post-Soviet space. Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the Kremlin has been making a consistent effort to reverse the earlier trend towards the weakening of Russia’s regional stance. One of the implications of this policy was the shift of the Russian-Western competition in the “common neighbourhood” towards an open stand-off after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian regional policy has run counter to structural changes that could not be counter-balanced through activism, whether enticing or coercive. As a result, 30 years since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia’s regional influence as well as its attraction as a societal role model and a security provider are continuing to erode. Russia has regional clout, which is nonetheless hardly growing over time. More and more often, Moscow is encountering difficulties in achieving its goals. While post-Soviet states resist Russia’s assertiveness, non-Western players pose new challenges to its posture.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, Conflict, Peace, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Post-Soviet Europe

8. The COVID-19 Curtain: Can Past Communist Regimes Explain the Vaccination Divide in Europe

Author:
Inés Berniell, Yarine Fawaz, Anne Laferrere, Pedro Mira, and Elizaveta Pronkina
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
As of November 2021, all former Communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe exhibit lower vaccination rates than Western European countries. Can institutional inheritance explain, at least in part, this heterogeneity in vaccination decisions across Europe? To study this question we exploit novel data from the second wave of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe) Covid-19 Survey fielded in Summer 2021 that covers 27 European countries and Israel. First, we document lower Covid-19 vaccine take-up amongst individuals above 55 years old who were born under Communism in Europe. Next, we turn to reunified Germany to get closer to a causal effect of exposure to Iron curtain regimes. We find that exposure to the Communist regime in East Germany decreases one’s probability to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 8 percentage points, increases that of not wanting the vaccine by 4 percentage points. Both effects are quite large and statistically significant, and they hold when controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics. We identify low social capital -measured as voluntary work, political engagement, trust in people- as a plausible channel through which past Communist regimes would still affect individuals’ preferences for Covid-19 vaccination.
Topic:
Communism, Public Health, Vaccine, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe and Post-Soviet Europe

9. The Impact of Jihadist Propaganda in the Russian Language: Analysis of Kavkazcenter

Author:
Giuliano Bifolchi
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development
Institution:
Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN)
Abstract:
Terrorism and jihadist propaganda are among the primary threats of the contemporary era. Because of the high number of foreign fighters from the post-Soviet republics among the rank of the Islamic State, there is a general concern about jihadist propaganda in the Russian language. Kavkazcenter has appeared as one of the main websites in the Russian language to support Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate) and regional militant groups. Firstly, this paper examines scientific literature useful to classify Kavkazcenter as a jihadist portal or a media agency. Secondly, the research focuses on the website Kavkazcenter investigating its structure, ideologies and connection with the Arab-Muslim world and the international terrorist network. Finally, this investigation intends to describe if Kavkazcenter represents a serious threat not only for the Russian national security but also for the entire post- Soviet space and the European Union itself, where North Caucasian migrants and refugees live.
Topic:
Terrorism, Violent Extremism, Propaganda, and Jihad
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Post-Soviet Europe

10. The Biggest Problem in Post-Communist Transition: The Privatization of Large Enterprises

Author:
Anders Åslund
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is rather clear what transition policies have worked. Almost all the post-communist countries have become market economies and have achieved macroeconomic stability. Privatization was economically necessary, and its economic outcomes have been very positive. Alas, politically, these successes have often been unsustainable because of strong popular sentiments against the private ownership of big enterprises. Substantial renationalization has occurred. What went wrong? How could privatization be done better, or be defended? What should be done to defend private enterprise in the future? This paper argues that the nature of privatization is far less important than the establishment of good rule of law so that private property rights can be defended.
Topic:
Privatization, Economic Growth, Macroeconomics, Trade, Transition, Soviet Union, and Economic Stability
Political Geography:
Post-Soviet Europe