Read and Download eBook Full
Author: V. Kononenko
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2011-04-28
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 0230306705
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDiscusses the ambiguous nature of the state in Russia, focusing on elite networks and their role in policy processes. This book examines the paradoxical dualism of state institutions and ruling networks, providing answers as to why some decisions are not implemented, and why the state exists despite the systemic inefficiency of its institutions.
Author: V. Kononenko
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011-01-01
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13: 9781349320837
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDiscusses the ambiguous nature of the state in Russia, focusing on elite networks and their role in policy processes. This book examines the paradoxical dualism of state institutions and ruling networks, providing answers as to why some decisions are not implemented, and why the state exists despite the systemic inefficiency of its institutions.
Author: Andrei Soldatov
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2015-09-08
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 1610395743
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Library Journal Best Book of 2015 A NPR Great Read of 2015 The Internet in Russia is either the most efficient totalitarian tool or the device by which totalitarianism will be overthrown. Perhaps both. On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government's front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world's most intrusive listening device, monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks. But for every hacker subcontracted by the FSB to interfere with Russia's antagonists abroad -- such as those who, in a massive denial-of-service attack, overwhelmed the entire Internet in neighboring Estonia -- there is a radical or an opportunist who is using the web to chip away at the power of the state at home. Drawing from scores of interviews personally conducted with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. From research laboratories in Soviet-era labor camps, to the legalization of government monitoring of all telephone and Internet communications in the 1990s, to the present day, their incisive and alarming investigation into the Kremlin's massive online-surveillance state exposes just how easily a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare. Dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world's most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world of The Red Web.
Author: Angela E. Stent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-01-05
Total Pages: 377
ISBN-13: 0691152977
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership offers a riveting narrative on U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and on the challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains close ties with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.
Author: Stephen F. Cohen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2018-11-27
Total Pages: 403
ISBN-13: 1510745823
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIs America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do? America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include: Distorting Russia US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016 The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia Was Putin’s Syria Withdrawal Really A “Surprise”? Trump vs. Triumphalism Has Washington Gone Rogue? Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares Trump Could End the New Cold War The Real Enemies of US Security Kremlin-Baiting President Trump Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct Terrorism and Russiagate Cold-War News Not “Fit to Print” Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer? Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them How Washington Provoked—and Perhaps Lost—a New Nuclear-Arms Race Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again) Russophobia Sanction Mania Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create. War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?
Author: Gerald Easter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000-01-13
Total Pages: 238
ISBN-13: 0521660858
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUsing archival sources, this book presents an explanation for the rise and subsequent collapse of the Soviet state.
Author: Margarita M. Balmaceda
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2021-05-11
Total Pages: 421
ISBN-13: 023155219X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRussia’s use of its vast energy resources for leverage against post-Soviet states such as Ukraine is widely recognized as a threat. Yet we cannot understand this danger without also understanding the opportunity that Russian energy represents. From corruption-related profits to transportation-fee income to subsidized prices, many within these states have benefited by participating in Russian energy exports. To understand Russian energy power in the region, it is necessary to look at the entire value chain—including production, processing, transportation, and marketing—and at the full spectrum of domestic and external actors involved, from Gazprom to regional oligarchs to European Union regulators. This book follows Russia’s three largest fossil-fuel exports—natural gas, oil, and coal—from production in Siberia through transportation via Ukraine to final use in Germany in order to understand the tension between energy as threat and as opportunity. Margarita M. Balmaceda reveals how this dynamic has been a key driver of political development in post-Soviet states in the period between independence in 1991 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. She analyzes how the physical characteristics of different types of energy, by shaping how they can be transported, distributed, and even stolen, affect how each is used—not only technically but also politically. Both a geopolitical travelogue of the journey of three fossil fuels across continents and an incisive analysis of technology’s role in fossil-fuel politics and economics, this book offers new ways of thinking about energy in Eurasia and beyond.
Author: Baasanjav Terbish
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2022-02-25
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 1666905690
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book recounts the entangled stories of three distinctly Russian movements—state ideology, Russian cosmism, and Eurasianism—from their inception at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century until now. Despite harboring pseudoscientific and mystical ideas specific to Russia, all three movements were propagated by their followers as “universal sciences,” and all three vied for scientific supremacy and universal acceptance. Suppressed by the Bolsheviks and their state ideology as “unscientific” in the 1920s, Russian cosmism and Eurasianism led an esoteric underground existence during the Soviet period and re-emerged in the dying years of the Soviet Union, seeking not only to reclaim their “scientific” status but also to potentially fill the perplexing vacuum left by the ensuing demise of Soviet state ideology. This study relates the post-Soviet search for a new state ideology, or new National Idea, at the federal and regional levels, based on the Kremlin’s projects and the case of the ethnic Republic of Kalmykia in south-west Russia.
Author: James Sherr
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2013-08-29
Total Pages: 154
ISBN-13: 1862033005
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDuring the Cold War, Soviet influence and Leninist ideology were inseparable. But the collapse of both systems threw Russian influence into limbo. In this book, James Sherr draws on his in-depth study of the country over many years to explain and analyse the factors that have brought Russian influence back into play. Today, Tsarist, Soviet and contemporary approaches combine in creative and discordant ways. The result is a policy based on a mixture of strategy, improvisation and habit. The novelty of this policy and its apparent successes pose possible dangers for Russia's neighbours, the West and Russia itself.
Author: Ararat Osipian
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-28
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13: 1351103792
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCorporate raiding – the shocking phenomenon whereby criminals, business rivals and even state bureaucrats visit business headquarters and force owners or staff to transfer business assets, land or property – is an increasing problem in Russia. This book, based on extensive original research, provides a comprehensive overview of this activity. It describes the nature of corporate raiding, provides numerous case studies and discusses the role of the state and government officials. Overall the book argues that the prevailing climate of business and government in Russia leads to a situation where control is closely linked to corruption and coercion.
