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271. Divergence and dispersion in the Russian economy

Author:
Per Botolf Maurseth
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
In the Soviet Union, one result of central planning was geographical decentralisation of economic activity to a large set of remote peripheral regions. For Russian post-Soviet regions an important question is whether centripetal market forces may alter the pre-existing industrial location. This paper addresses some aspects of regional economic development in Russia. The Russian economic landscape differs from what is common in market economies. Peripheral regions are generally richer than the average. During the 1990s, differences in gross regional product increased. These developments have also meant less spatial concentration of economic activity. During the last half of the 1990s, economic growth was higher in central regions than in the peripheries. If these trends continue, the Russian economic landscape will alter significantly in the future, with income per capita, total income and population being concentrated in economic central regions.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

272. Terrorism and Transnational Organised Crime: the emerging nexus

Author:
Tamara Makarenko
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Abstract:
The end of the Cold War and subsequent demise of the Soviet Union ushered in a new international security environment that can no longer be explained by the dominant security paradigms utilised by most Western governments and analysts since World War II. Our understanding of security falling under the rubric of high politics, and focused on maintaining the territorial sovereignty of state actors has been questioned by several ongoing international dynamics. For example, inter-state conflicts have been replaced by rising occurrences of intra-state violence; the state as the central focus of international affairs has given way to a host of non-state actors; and, it has become increasingly evident that the greatest threat to security emanates from the rapidly evolving phenomena of terrorism and transnational organised crime (TOC). In actuality, national, regional and international experience with insecurity over the past decade has confirmed that terrorism and TOC deserve paramount attention precisely because they both span national boundaries, and thus are necessarily multi-dimensional and organised; and, because they directly threaten the stability of states by targeting economic, political and social systems.
Topic:
Security, Crime, Economics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

273. Baltic History and Soviet Empire: Recovering the Past in Soviet and Russian Historical Discourse

Author:
Thomas Sherlock
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
This paper is a modest effort to sketch the transformation of public memory in conditions of political transition. Specifically, it examines the recovery and interpretation of the Baltic past in Soviet and post-Soviet discourse. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part examines the desacralization of the central myths that legitimated the Soviet empire and its rule over the Baltic nationalities. The debate on Baltic history during perestroika was part of a larger - and increasingly destructive -- examination of Soviet history that shocked society with a flood of negative revelations about the past, forcing political and academic authorities to cancel secondary school exams and discard existing textbooks as virtually useless. This struggle over how to interpret the Soviet past eventually weakened the normative supports of the Soviet state, contributing to its collapse in 1991.
Topic:
Cold War and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

274. Politics from the Barrel of a Gun: Small Arms Proliferation and Conflict in the Republic of Georgia

Author:
Spyros Demetriou
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Over ten years have elapsed since the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. Radical transitions from one political system to another are by definition conflict-prone, involving fierce competition between differing visions, fluid political affiliations, social activism, power vacuums, and severe economic crises—if not collapse. In such contexts of instability and uncertainty, the recourse to armed violence—as a form of expression and an instrument of power—is an attractive option. The collapse of the USSR engendered a radical transition culminating in the creation of 15 internationally recognized states. Although for the most part surprisingly peaceful, the transition to independence in four states—Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia—was marked by widespread violence.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, and War
Political Geography:
Moldova, Soviet Union, and Georgia

275. The OSCE in Central Asia: A New Strategy

Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) emerged in a wave of euphoria surrounding the events of the late 1980s in the former Soviet bloc. Building on the achievements of its predecessor, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), it has played a key role in state-building and democratisation in many areas of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Topic:
Development, Politics, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, Central Asia, and Soviet Union

276. Two Reluctant Regionalizers? The European Union and Russia in Europe's North

Author:
Hiski Haukkala
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
It has become something of a cliché to argue that the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in dramatic changes in the unfolding of political space in the 1990s. Yet this was especially true in the case of the then European Community (EC) and its relations with the Soviet Union/Russian Federation. During the Cold War, the relations between the EC and the USSR were practically non-existent. The ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev and the period of perestroika and glasnost resulted, however, in a gradual rapprochement between the two parties. The creation of these new ties was formalized in the signing of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the EC and the USSR, which was, however, in effect signed with an already crumbling Soviet Union as it took place as late as 21 December 1989.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

277. Russian Policy toward the Korean Peninsula, 1991-2001

Author:
Jane Shapiro Zacek
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
In July of 2000, Russian Federation (RF) President Vladimir Putin spent two days in Pyongyang, North Korea, the first Russian (or Soviet) head of state ever to visit that country. Newly elected President in his own right in March 2000, Putin wasted no time promoting his East Asia foreign policy agenda, including presidential visits to South Korea, China, and elsewhere in the region within the past year.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, East Asia, South Korea, North Korea, Soviet Union, Korea, Sinai Peninsula, and Pyongyang

278. The South Korean Military and the Korean War

Author:
Chang-Il Ohn
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
Immediately before the Japanese surrender in the Pacific War (1941-5), there was one Korea, though it had been under Japanese colonial rule for 36 years. The 38th parallel, which the American policymakers hastily picked out as the operational boundary between U.S. and Soviet troops in the Far East at the last stage of the Pacific War, divided one Korea into the two, North and South.1 Soviet troops occupied North Korea, Americans entered the South, and the two sides began military occupation in the two Koreas. The latitude, which Washington policymakers conceived to be a temporary line to halt the further southward advance of Soviet troops and thereby physically eliminate the possibility of Soviet participation in the Japanese occupation, and to facilitate the process of establishing a Korean government "in due course," however, began to embrace new political and military connotations. The two Koreas, even on a temporary basis, thus appeared. The status of and situations in the two Koreas were almost the same at the beginning of the military occupations. In both parts of Korea, people were very poor mainly because of the harsh Japanese mobilization for conducting the Pacific War. There were neither major factories, nor organized indigenous troops, nor influential political groups except the strong popular desire to establish a Korean government right away. Almost every well-informed Korean had a distinctive idea about the future of Korea and the nature of its government. As a result, "too many" political organizations and parties were formed, and, especially, the American military government judged that the Koreans were "too much" politicized. All in all, the situations in the two parts of Korea were almost identical as much as the status of being the occupied. The policies and strategies of the two occupiers—the United States and the Soviet Union—toward Korea, however, were different. Despite the wartime agreement with the United States that Korea should be independent "in due course," which meant that a Korean government should be established after the period of multinational trusteeship, the Soviet Union was not enthusiastic about the idea of multi-tutorship for Korea. Instead, the Soviet authority was busy in communizing the northern half of Korea, trying to make it a stronghold for securing the entire Korean peninsula. The Chief Soviet Delegate, Colonel General T. F. Shtykov, made it clear, at the Joint Commission convened in Seoul on March 20, 1946, that Korea should be "loyal to the Soviet Union, so that it will not become a base for an attack on the Soviet Union" in the future.2 This Soviet position was directly contrary to the primary objective of the United States in Korea, that is, "to prevent Russian domination of Korea."3 Unable to find a compromised solution on Korea through the Joint Commission, the United States internationalized the Korean issue by turning it over to the United Nations. The Soviet Union, however, did not accept the U.N. resolution that a Korean government would be established through holding a general election throughout Korea, and the Soviet authority in North Korea rejected the entry of U.N. representatives. As a result, the two Korean governments were created, one in the South blessed by the United Nations and the other in the North brewed by the Soviet Union, in August and September 1948 respectively.
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, America, Washington, South Korea, North Korea, Soviet Union, and Korea

279. The Tale of Two Constructivisms at the Cold War's End

Author:
Vendulka Kubalkova
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
Constructivism as an approach to IR and Soviet “new thinking” as a phenomenon of the final years of the cold war barely crossed paths since constructivism was coming into existence as an approach just as the other, “new thinking”, together with its main author, Mikhail Gorbachev, were about to exit international relations. Soviet “new thinking” is associated with Gorbachev's tenure of office as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). This ran from the mid 1980s till the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Nicholas Onuf introduced constructivism in his book World of Our Making in 1989 and it was only in 1992, a year after the formal dissolution of the USSR, that Alexander Wendt referred to “new thinking” in his article “Anarchy is What States Make of it” as “one of the most important phenomena in [recent] world politics” (Wendt 1992, 450). It is in this same article that he also used the term constructivism, a term he borrowed from Onuf. Other, freshly convert- ed constructivists followed in Wendt's footsteps and, as evidence of the strength of their new approach, they often used “the DNA of the deceased”: Soviet “new thinking” and other artifacts and stories related to the cold war, which—with its main protagonist gone—was over. “New thinking” figures prominently again in Wendt's theoretical book on constructivism, where it is probably the empirical case that he handles in a more sustained manner and devotes to it more time than to any other cases or examples (Wendt, 1999).
Topic:
Cold War and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Soviet Union

280. An Anchor in the Mud

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
For almost two centuries—since Alexander Pushkin's masterpieces laid the foundation—Russian literature has persisted in addressing the core issues and dilemmas of human existence, taking humanity's measure, and explaining Russia and Russians to themselves and the world. Even during the Soviet era, when virtually all of Russia's finest writers and poets were exiled, killed, imprisoned, savagely censored, or forbidden to publish, the tradition lived in underground samizdat, manuscripts smuggled abroad, and in the state-run literary magazines of the “liberal” persuasion, especially during political thaws.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, and Emerging Markets
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union